It'll Give Us Something To Talk About
by latetothpartyhp
Summary: Oliver has problems. Lois wants out, Tess wants Clark and Clark wants his powers back. If only Oliver could have what he wants... Set in the Luthor-verse about a month after the Finale.  Sequel to "Of All The Towns..." and "I Don't Mind a Little Trouble"
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** It'll Give Us Something To Talk About The Next Time We Meet  
><strong>Author:<strong> Flying High / latetothpartyhp  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Chloe/Oliver, Clark/Tess, ex-Lois/Oliver  
><strong>Rating:<strong> Teen / PG-13  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Coarse language, violence, brief nudity  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> For _Luthor _and_ Hex_  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Oliver has problems. Lois wants out, Tess wants Clark and Clark wants his powers back. If only Oliver could have what he wants... Set in the _Luthor_-verse about a month after the_ Finale_.  
>Sequel to <em>Of All The Towns In All The Worlds In All The Parallel Universes, You Had To Walk Into Mine<em> and _I Don't Mind A Little Trouble_.  
><strong>Author's Note (and some additional warnings):<strong> Many, many thanks to **iluvaqt** for beta'ing this and giving me the confidence to keep writing it. This is a JLA-centered story with a Chlollie twist that ya'll should see coming from a mile away (which I write to persuade anyone put off by the lack of Chloe in the first few chapters). Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!

!- - - # - $ - % - - ^ - & - * - ! - - - # - $ - % - - ^ - & - & - & - - *

Seven-thirty. An hour until dark. It wasn't his night for patrol, but, given an hour or two, he'd be out there anyway. He and Dinah had set up a random hodge-podge of dates and times, Dinah being firmly of the opinion that what they lacked in numbers they needed to make up for in surprise. Occasionally he'd miss a date and then double up later as a penalty. Of late, he'd been doubling and tripling up for the hell of it. Every day he spent reviewing reports and listening to presentations was another day spent like a rubber band, pulled tighter and tenser until he was released to the streets. In a suit, decisions were complicated: how many people would be affected, in how many years, for how many dollars? Every choice meant consequences for thousands. Millions. In his gear, decisions were simple, like they'd been on the island: observe, follow, intercept, prevent. Every other thought, every other feeling melted away.

Dinah, of course, would have a fit. Since gearing up was a last-minute decision on his part, he'd argue that the pattern was still random and she'd argue that over-exposure would just make things worse if they had to pull back for some reason, "say, if you're injured," she'd reason, "which, knowing the way you operate, is pretty much a given." Been there, done that, he thought. Given that his choice tonight was either risking a few bullets or accumulating a little more liver damage, he chose the bullets. Chicks dug scars. Cirrhosis, not so much.

Of course, life being what it was, even he, billionaire CEO of Queen Industries, didn't always get to make his own choices.

"Mr. Queen? There's a Victor Stone here to see you."

"I don't recall anything in the book for a Victor Stone."

"Jerry Saffire emailed earlier today hoping you could squeeze him in while he was in town. Said he was some kind of wunderkind in Personal Projects."

"Jerry say anything else?"

"Just that the guy was hitting all his targets and more and you would definitely want to take a look."

Right. Which meant that Victor had hacked into his boss' boss' email account to tell him he'd flown all the way from Star City to discuss his _extra_ extracurricular activities.

"Fine. Show him in."

The door buzzed and Victor walked in, Gina evidently not feeling a Personal Projects wunderkind needed to be handed off personally with a local spring water or a fair-trade cup of coffee.

"Mr. Stone."

"Mr. Queen. Thanks so much for taking the time to see me this evening."

"Not at all." Oliver eyed the door. The room should be sound-proof once it shut, but there was no guarantee Gina wouldn't buzz herself in with a tea-cart if that's what she took it into her head to do. "If Jerry says I'll want to take a look, then I'll want to take a look."

"Great. Great. What I have here is – "

"Just a second, will you?" Oliver interrupted, picking up his phone. "Gina, would you mind running down to Fuji Ya and grabbing the usual? Great, thanks." He brought up her office cam feed on his monitor and made sure she got up to leave. "Sorry about that, Mr. Stone. We've got about 20 minutes. Show me what you got."

"Ok. Unless - is now a bad time?"

"Yes, but you're here and it's now." Oliver checked the feed again. She was gone. "Next time, if you can, try to arrange something a little more in advance. If people get used to seeing you in and out of here at odd hours the very best we can hope for is that they'll think I'm practicing for the other team."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"You think it'll help your chances with the women of Metropolis?"

Victor raised a brow. "Concern noted, but I'm based in Star City now. First up," he said, tapping a few icons on his touch-pad and handing it to Oliver.

"What am I looking at?

"It's a schematic for a nano-virus."

"And?" Oliver made an impatient gesture with his hands.

"Seriously? I spent the last week analyzing this intel, flew out here on the red-eye, and you're not gonna give me five of the twenty minutes you can fit me into to explain why before you get snippy?"

"Vic – "

"No, no. It's cool. You know what I think'll work better in the future is if I set up some kind of drop with Dinah. That way – "

Oliver froze. He just – Dinah – no. Just no.

And, ok, he was being a dick. "Look, man, I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time focusing today, but obviously you wouldn't be here if it wasn't critical."

"Is something going on?" Victor asked. He looked slightly obligated and still a lot peeved, and it was team business so Oliver thought it wouldn't be a great idea to tell him he was mad because his patrol had been delayed.

"No. Yes. But it's personal."

"So, based on your earlier comments, does this mean you're tired of living a lie?"

His delivery was so dead-pan Oliver couldn't help smirking. "And here I was finally thinking I could open up to someone."

"I do not judge. And if you do need to talk I guess we can do that too."

Oliver considered that. He'd made a promise, to himself more than to her, but he'd already trusted the other man with one or five other momentous secrets. "Lois … broke up with me," he said, and – ouch. Saying it out loud like that … it was real now.

Victor's eyes widened. "Whoa. That is rough. I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Did this just happen?"

"Last night. Well, were been fighting a few days ago and she took off. Said she needed some space to think, and then when she came back it was for her stuff. I managed to get her to hold off for awhile, asked her to stay at least until she found a place of her own, but I don't think it bought us any time. She met with a real estate agent this morning."

"She obviously doesn't hate you then. Maybe when she gets some more space she'll decide she doesn't like it."

"You haven't met Lois, have you? Whatever she decides to do, she does. No looking back. And apparently I don't need her enough, whatever that means," Oliver said. Actually, that was unfair. He knew what she meant, even if he didn't want to know. She meant that, before, she had been his haven. His home. Now more often than not she was the snoring figure next to him in the bed when he finally crawled into it in the wee hours of the morn.

He didn't see that changing any time soon.

"Then you have to show her you do," Victor answered. "If that's what you want to do," he added when the silence became sufficiently awkward.

"Yeah. So. Nano-virus. That would be a very small virus."

Victor nodded. They were moving on. "Well, in a way, all viruses could be considered nano-sized machines. What we have here is a virus that has been engineered to for a very specific function. Once it invades a living dermal cell, it immediately starts copying itself, and once it has reached a critical mass inside the cell, it begins to secrete a protein similar to that found in spider silk. This protein then binds to the cell membrane. Spider silk, as I'm sure you know, has an incredible tensile strength."

"And does it impart this tensile strength to the membrane?"

"From the results we found, I'd say yes."

"It's essentially creating invisible full-body armor."

"And wait - there's more." Victor flicked the schematic away and a molecular formula replaced it.

"What's this?"

"Growth hormone. We think."

"You're not sure?"

"Well, it's not human growth hormone, and it doesn't match the growth hormone of any other species that's been documented." Victor flicked through a few more images, some drawings and some equations. "This, we think, is an attempt to configure the nano-virus to deliver the hormone." He flicked - more molecular diagrams, simpler than that for the growth hormone. "This is some kind of metal alloy. Titanium and some other mineral. We don't know what."

Oliver stared at the image on screen. He knew what the other mineral was. He'd known since Patty'd died. "It's meteor rock."

Victor stared. "You sure? 'Cuz - "

"Yes. I'm sure. Does any of the data you downloaded include financials? Billing? Emails or phone logs?"

"No bills of sale. We have some purchase orders and vendor invoices. Most of that goes back a few years."

"How many?"

"Five or six. They're dated 2005, a few early 2006. And then a few more from about three months ago."

"2005. Would that have been – " began Oliver.

"During my bionic guinea pig phase," finished Victor. "And I'm guessing Clark revived the project for the same reason Lex started it. He's not planning to sell this tech to the DoD. He wants the powers it could give for himself."

In the short time Oliver had known him Victor had struck him as cool and calm, someone who could discuss the minutia of disembowelment in the same even tone as he could the last Superbowl outcome. The testiness earlier had been a surprise, but understandable – the intel Victor had was urgent, and he'd been a asshole. But Victor was back to his somewhat preternaturally controlled self now as he discussed, unperturbed, how he'd been tortured, the methods that might have been tried but weren't, and his own conclusion as to why. And no, Oliver didn't think that just because he had practically cried in front of the man over being dumped; it was more like the information and the delivery were connected.

"Ok. So that's terrifying. Are you, uh – how you holding up, knowing this?"

"Knowing that Ultraman may return?"

"That too. I was thinking more of, you know, memories. And stuff."

Victor gave him a hard look, then shook his head. "If you gotta know, I haven't slept in 72 hours, not that it matters really anymore, but that in itself is part of the problem. I really won't ever need to sleep again, if I can keep myself juiced up. The upside to that is that I am more capable than than the average person is to find this motherfucker and blow him out of the water and I am going to use those capabilities. Now, the time-and-date history on most of these files most of what he's added to Lex's work has been theoretical. There's a good chance that little or none of this is functioning hardware yet. But we can't – "

The office door buzzed and Oliver casually minimized the diagram on Victor's device as Gina let herself in.

"That was fast," he told her.

"It's a Monday," she shrugged.

"Careful, I'll stop thinking of you as a miracle worker." Gina glowed, and Oliver reminded himself to find some way to promote her out of his office before that got out of hand. "I'll be heading out after I finish with Victor here."

"I'll see you in the morning then." She floated out and Victor smirked.

"Maybe letting her think you bat for the other team isn't such a bad idea," he said.

Oliver snorted. "She's had my wedding to another woman in the book for the last six months. She's drawn little hearts and flowers around the date. You think me coming out of the closet would slow her down at all?"

"You haven't told her?"

"I did mention the hearts and flowers?"

"Well, yeah, but, people gotta know. The caterer's gotta know, right?"

"No, people don't gotta know. People can mind their own damn business for once." Oliver maximized the metal alloy diagrams again. "If he was planning to use this himself, that means the meteor rock no longer weakens him. If he does this, he'll have most of his old powers back, and we'll have no way of stopping him."

"Did you not hear me before? You say that as if we'd let that happen."

"Did I?" Oliver asked. "What I meant was we got a couple of hours to kill before happy hour. Feel like saving the world?"

Victor grinned. Oliver grinned. He couldn't help it. Victor got it, and it was fun to be with someone who got it. In fact if there was any more spontaneous bonhomie in the room he probably would find himself suddenly in the other dugout. Fortunately Victor and his relentless practicality intervened with a suggestion: "Well, like I was going to say before, we can't assume he hasn't moved forward with this. The first step is, now that we know what's on those servers, we gotta erase it."

"First step, yeah. Second step is erase the back-up. He's a Luthor. He'd have a Plan B."

"He had those servers housed in a barn. I'd say they were the back-up. Second step is we find the lab, if there is one."

"Ok. So now we find the lab. If there is one." He studied the touch-pad screen again, as if it might hold some geographical clues. Victor, however, leaned back in his, tapping his fingers on the armrest.

"What?"

"He's running this out of Cadmus," Victor said. "I've been doing some research. Cadmus was gutted after Lex died, most of the staff transferred to projects in LuthorCorp proper. It still exists on paper, but my guess is Lionel would be surprised to learn there was money going through it."

"Why would that be?"

"Back-up servers in a barn, for one thing. For another, deliveries are all being made to the old address, but when I checked it out earlier today the space was empty. So he's not using the lab that's on LuthorCorp's books – he's gone underground. He's using the Cadmus name as a front for the vendors, for credit history maybe, but he's hiding what he does from anyone in the company or the government who might wander by, and my guess is he's probably funding it personally. He doesn't want Lionel to know. And you know him better than I do, but Lionel strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn't like not knowing."

"No. No he doesn't. But telling him doesn't mean he'd tell us anything in return."

"Maybe he would. He's been giving all those interviews, talking about how you saved his life and how he realizes his mortality now and what's important in life."

Oliver laughed, a big, mirthless laugh from the depths of his belly. "You think he means a word of that? It's a PR stunt. He had to find some way to explain where the hell he was all those weeks. And he's probably enjoying goading Clark in the media, telling the world about his new favorite son. From the looks of it, it's working.

"I'll tell you what, if Lionel helped us, there would be a price on that help. At the very least he'd want an invitation to the wedding to bolster his image and at most he'd want an uncomfortable number of shares in QI and God knows what else. I'm not willing to give him any of those things at this point. Sorry."

Victor nodded. "Alright, but as it is you know we're just treading water."

Oliver slumped back in his chair. "I know."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** It'll Give Us Something To Talk About The Next Time We Meet  
><strong>Author:<strong> Flying High / latetothpartyhp  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Chloe/Oliver, Clark/Tess, ex-Lois/Oliver  
><strong>Rating:<strong> Teen / PG-13  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Coarse language, violence, brief nudity  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> For _Luthor _and_ Hex_  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Oliver has problems. Lois wants out, Tess wants Clark and Clark wants his powers back. If only Oliver could have what he wants... Set in the _Luthor_-verse about a month after the_ Finale_.  
>Sequel to <em>Of All The Towns In All The Worlds In All The Parallel Universes, You Had To Walk Into Mine<em> and _I Don't Mind A Little Trouble_.  
><strong>Author's Note (and some additional warnings):<strong> Many, many thanks to **iluvaqt** for beta'ing this and giving me the confidence to keep writing it. This is a JLA-centered story with a Chlollie twist that ya'll should see coming from a mile away (which I write to persuade anyone put off by the lack of Chloe in the first few chapters). Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!

!- - - # - $ - % - - ^ - & - * - ! - - - # - $ - % - - ^ - & - & - & - - *

"I think there's another way to approach this," Dinah said.

Oliver stared at her politely. Dinah guessed that was an improvement. Most of the time lately he was scowling or frowning or rolling his eyes over receipts or budgets. And there'd been a lot of "lately" lately. If someone had told her a year ago she'd be spending this much time with a tree-hugging trust-fundee like Oliver Queen she would have hung up on them and gone to commercial. Hell, if anyone told her that she spent this much time with him now she'd hang up and go to commercial – No. No she wouldn't. She'd text Victor and have him trace the call. Then she'd hang up and go to commercial. Yet another way in which her life was not what it had been.

"Yeah? How's that?"

"Check it out." She marched over to one of the pedestals and punched a few keys. Nothing happened. "Stuart? Why isn't this one working?"

The tech popped up from under the desk. "That one's not hooked up yet. Try there." He pointed across the room.

_Way to make me look good, Stuart_. She marched over to the other pedestal and punched a few keys. This time a database popped up. She clicked through a few screens until the file she wanted appeared. She turned. "May I present to you: Zatanna Zatara."

A photo of popped up of a dark-haired woman in a top-hat and dinner jacket. "She's hot," he said.

"Priorities, Oliver."

"Gender: Female", Oliver read, ignoring her. "Well, that's obvious. Species: Human? – we don't know if she's human?"

"I know. Kinda freaky, right? According to Chloe there are all kinds of humanoids running around the planet. She's got at least one Martian mentioned in here. And an Atlantian."

"Atlantian?"

"Yeah, you'd love him. In Chloe's world he's an eco-terrorist."

He gave her a flat smile. "If we'd make such a great couple then why aren't I reading about him?"

"'Cuz he can't do what Zatanna can do."

"Which is?"

She sighed and tapped the relevant line on the screen. "Here: _Powers and Abilities: Sorceress. Telekinesis. Teleportation. Her magic is effective against Kryptonians and humans. Not tested against other sentient species. Her powers may require the aid of her father's spell book in order to be fully functional. As always, your reality may vary. _See – Kryptonian. That's her Blur, which means it's also our Ultraman, right? And the best part is, Ms. Zatara's magic works against him whether he's got the powers God gave him or is just surgically enhanced."

"So your plan is that we recruit her?" he asked, his expression dubious.

"Yes. And don't look at me that way. It's a good idea. If he gets his powers back he'll still be vulnerable to magic."

"I didn't say it was a bad idea. But can we really trust this photo? How do we know this isn't like one of those meet-ups you hear about where you go see someone in person for the first time and she's actually 30 pounds heavier and five years older?"

"More proof that liberals are the real pigs."

"The point is that this," he tapped the screen, "might not exist in our world. Not to mention there's no location listed other than 'Shadowcrest' and who the hell knows where that is? She could be anywhere in the world, or never born, or dead. I just don't know if it's worth the time and effort."

She couldn't believe it. He was threatened. Threatened by something that could build the team and protect the world because it was her idea. So unbelievable. "You're – this is ridiculous. Why can't you admit that this could work? Yes, it's a long shot but at this point so is Victor's needle-in-a-haystack search for Clark Luthor's Evil Lab of Evil."

"At least we have some evidence that Clark has a lab – "

"And we have evidence that this sorceress can affect him." She jabbed a hand at the screen. "Unless you think Chloe just put it in there to mess with us."

"I don't – " he stopped, straightened, stared at the screen. Then at her. Then at the rosette windows overhead. "Obviously, things work a little differently in Chloe's world," he told the windows. "Says so right here," he said, tapping the screen again. "In her world, Lionel Luthor's dead. Clark Luthor was adopted by a farm family in Smallville and runs around doing good deeds. Oliver Queen has brown eyes. So there's a sorceress in Chloe's world who stops bad guys. Who's to say that in our world this Zatanna Zatara isn't some wicked witch cackling to herself in the mists of her stone fortress plotting to poison her pretty step-daughter?"

"I … don't even know how to begin to respond to that."

"We're not living in Chloe's world. You've got to stop pretending that we are. Or trying to turn ours into hers," he said, swooping his arm around to indicate the renovation.

"Whoa. Ok. I don't know what's going on in your head, but I would consider therapy if I were you. You were already using this as the Green Arrow dressing room; all I did was suggest that maybe we expand on that a little. And yes, I get that things are different. Lionel's alive here, Clark's a psychopath here, I know that. But lots of things are the same. Victor's a good guy in both places, and by the way, he looks the same too. So do Bart and Andrea and, they are, I might add, also good guys. And we've got reason to believe that weirdo in Gotham might be a good guy in both places too."

"You know that from her little database."

"From M.O.I.R.A.? Yes, how else would I know it?"

"I'm not in … what did you call it?"

"'M.O.I.R.A.' It's the Meta-Oriented Intelligent Recruitment Archive."

"Ok, so I'm not in _M.O.I.R.A_."

God, his _ego_. It knew no bounds. "Well, neither am I. Makes sense – why would she need to tell me about myself? What would be the point?"

"Maybe the point is that we're not good guys. Not everywhere."

A light went on. Narcissus might actually have a method to his madness. Or at least a real concern. "No," she said. "No. That makes no sense at all. First off, I would never be evil. Second, why would she have approached us if she had any reason to think we weren't good people? Third, what differentiates this world from hers is the fact that Lionel got to Clark before the Kents did. It stands to reason then that anything else that's different would be connected to Lionel or the Luthors in some way."

He stared up at the rosettes again, smiling to himself and sort of shaking his head, like she didn't get it or something. Which – shit.

"Oliver, look at me. No, seriously. Look. At. Me." When he had done as she'd told him to, she drew a breath. "Yes, you are Lionel's biological son in this universe. That has not made you evil. Annoying, self-involved and arrogant, but not evil. Why would you ever think that in a universe in which you were _not_ Lionel's son that you would care any less about saving people and saving the planet and saving the whales than you do here? I hate to say it, but you are a good guy. You're a good guy here, and you're a good guy there. So stop freaking out about that shit and tell me how we're going to find this 'Princess of Prestidigitation'."

He had an embarrassed little smile on his face now, as if she'd given him a present, or he was about to cry. She really hoped it wasn't that last one. She didn't think she could deal with a crying Oliver Queen.

Thankfully he just turned to read the rest of the Zatanna file.

"Well, I guess we start with the obvious: Google her and see what comes up. We could probably stick a tracker on Clark's car and have Bart look for her when Clark's not – " he broke off as _Stars and Stripes Forever _rang out from his pocket. "Just a sec," he said to her. "General Lane. … Yes, thanks. … Say, listen, Lo told me you were stateside and I wondered if you had some time to meet. … Sure, sure. … Well, there might be some business too. … I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that over the phone." He laughed. It was always a little weird to see him to wheel and deal. Same SoCal frat-boy schtick as always, but somehow that schtick had made QI into one of those massive conglomerates with the kind of feel-good commercials that told you absolutely nothing about what the company did. Was this really the guy who drove a hybrid? Considering that it was a BMW hybrid, she supposed it was. "Lo sends her love. … Yeah, we'll see you then. Bye." He clicked his phone off. "Well, that should be a profitable night's work. Nothing like a military contract to bilk the taxpayers, right?"

"I didn't think QI did military contracts."

"Well, the military doesn't exactly bid things out the way they used to, which until now has suited Lionel Luthor just fine."

"And why wouldn't it suit him now?"

"Because we are selling them something Lionel doesn't even know he has."

"You have got to be kidding me." God, she wished she had something to slam down right now. "It doesn't even bother you that it's not your technology to sell, does it?"

"It doesn't bother you that Clark Luthor is trying to recreate Ultraman?"

"How is selling stolen property stopping Clark?"

"Look around you. The plaster work and the paint job and the lighting and the dozen dozen monitors you have hooked up everywhere – what do you think pays for all of this, Ms. Efficient Markets 2011? Information Asymmetry. Look it up."

"So, what? Every new product you've come out with in the last year has been stolen from some competitor? Wait – that actually makes sense."

"Hey, guys?"

Dinah and Oliver turned as one to glare at the sheepish, bespectacled tech.

"Uh, I need to get at those wires, so … sorry?"

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Night fell and Oliver found himself squatting patiently next to the water tank atop the Payne Avenue Ace Hardware on the corner of Payne and Maryland. Opposite of him sat the Payne Reliever, a topless place that had, sadly, lost one of their most popular dancers the night before to what rumor said was a grisly minded patron, all while Oliver had sat munching on salmon rolls and trying, with Victor, to tabulate the Luthor family real estate holdings in the greater Metropolis area. Bart had learned this while loading up on egg rolls and green papaya salad at the flea market. The girl pounding the papaya had a brother who knew the guy who'd discovered the body and, off topic, she had finally agreed to go with Bart to a movie that Saturday.

"Just make sure the movie's _in town_," Oliver had told him before pulling an empty water bottle out of the recycling bin and breaking it across his desk.

That had probably been unnecessary, he thought upon reflection, but it had felt good at the time. Not that he would have likely been anywhere near the Payne Reliever last night at the time in question, but just the fact that this stuff was happening, now, when it would not have six months ago was pissing him off. For that matter the endless spool of red tape the Luthors used to hide the simplest transactions from public view was pissing him off, as had the total lack of hits for "Zatanna Zatara" online. They'd found one article from the Gotham _Gazette_ society page archive about a John Zatara headlining at a birthday party for Thomas Wayne thirty years ago, a lot of fanfiction based on _The Count of Monte Cristo_, and little else. No one in Metropolis or Gotham was paying a utility bill under the name "Zatara", nor had anyone been born with or died with that name in either county in the last forty years.

That of course meant nothing, other than that "Zatara" might be a stage name and the illusionist who used it could have been born John Wjzokowski in Peoria and died seventeen years ago of blood alcohol poisoning in Santa Fe.

It still pissed him off.

Not to mention his lucky arrowhead had gone missing.

That was pissing him off too.

All of which meant that tonight, he was squatting beside the water tank an hour before last call capturing for eternity – _click_ – the mug of everyone who left the Payne Reliever with the camera built in to his glasses. Focusing on what he could do, that's what he was doing. He'd had to jerry-rig an IR filter over the flash to hide it and he had no idea what results that would produce, but that was all right. _Click._ Experimenting with the gadgets was part of the fun. If he thought he could get away with going inside he had a camera for that too, but Oliver Queen heading into a bar in this part of town would cause too much of a distraction. So would sending Dinah in there, albeit of a different sort, but -and, yeah, this was sexist of him, but still - he wasn't sending her anywhere near a guy who liked to slice pretty women to shreds. _Click_. Bart, on the other hand, he knew would be too distracted to be of any use, and Victor and Andrea were both busy with other projects.

Which again left him here, squatting beside the water tank. He'd emailed Victor earlier to ask whether Victor thought a search of DDS' servers for anything Zatara-related might be fruitful and Victor had pinged him back immediately to ask how comfortable he, Oliver, would be with a DDS investigation of Queen Industries. The answer to that, obviously, was not so much. Beyond what they might find that would endanger the team, a DDS investigation meant a drop in share prices, and a drop in share prices meant Lionel circling him like a jolly paternal vulture. _Click._

And there was another problem he couldn't do anything about. Aside from being the chief suspect in Lionel's disappearance, the few weeks Lionel'd been gone had been some of the best in Oliver's life. Clark had just lost his powers, LuthorCorp had been thrown into disarray and the team had started to come together. _Click._ He didn't know what had happened since he and Chloe had brought his erstaz dad back into this world. It was more than Lionel stirring up the pot again – in fact, except for a few creepy, ironic media statements, Lionel hadn't done anything that Oliver could see other than to re-solidify his power at his company. No. It was like there was a permanent full moon shining down on them all, driving everyone crazy and him most of all.

That didn't matter, of course. What mattered was the work to be done. QI. The team. Stopping Clark. Finding Zatanna. Finding whoever had killed that poor dancer and making him pay. He had to keep at it.

He'd keep at it until they dragged him away.

_Click._


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was up. He could tell because the blackness under his lids had that faint reddish tinge it had when the morning was pounding on them, demanding to be let in. The morning could pound all it wanted for all he cared; he wasn't going to open them for love or money. Well, maybe for love. For the first time in a few weeks it seemed like a possibility. There was a soft voice was whispering in his ear, entreating him to "_Rise and shine and give God the glory – _**" **and he smiled at how much dirtier that song sounded now that he wasn't twelve anymore and hearing it belted out by the girls from Camp Kippewa as they banged on the Camp Cobbosseecontee boys' cabins at five in the morning. There'd been this one girl, Alice – or was it Alison? – with blonde hair who always seemed to have a Tootsie-Pop...

**… **but, sadly, it was not Alison continuing to sing "_Rise and shine and give God the glory-ory" _in his ear_. _And hewas pretty sure it wasn't Lois – she could be froggy in the morning, but not as bad as this. Plus Lois didn't sing. Did she? While he pondered that a hand came up and clutched his jaw, shaking it. The voice grew louder: "_Rise. And. Shine. And – _**" **No, that wasn't Lois singing. Somebody else then. Somebody with a firm hand-shake; that grip on his jaw was pretty solid. He grabbed at where he thought the hand's wrist would be, but it wasn't. The voice chuckled. It was an oddly deep sound for this time of the morning. Normally he didn't wake up to tenors in his bedroom. "_CHILDREN OF THE LORD_," the voice shouted as his blankets were ripped off him and then he was awake and upright, sitting on the edge of edge of his bed while Bart doubled over laughing in the corner across the room. He grabbed a pillow and hurled it, a gesture he knew was futile even before Bart disappeared and reappeared in the other corner.

**"**What the hell?" he shouted.

Bart gasped and shook his head. Oliver through another pillow, again futilely, as Bart was sitting on the bed before it landed. "Don't you have a fiancée, or something?" the kid asked.

**"**Yes, and she's right here," said Lois from the doorway. "What the hell _is_going on?"

Bart stood, only partially, Oliver was sure, from the "answers now" look on her face. "Lois, this is Bart," he said quickly before the little squint could start in with the crappy Spanglish. "He's been running some errands for me. I don't know why he didn't have the commonsense to _knock_."

**"**What? I didn't want to wake everyone up," Bart told him, followed by an "_Enchanté_**" **to Lois. So, it was crappy Franclish now.

**"**Likewise," Lois answered. "How'd he get in here?"

Oliver sighed. "He's got certain … abilities … "

**"**Skills, even" Bart interrupted.** "**They're _muy bueno _but the boss here doesn't want us to talk about them _in front of civilians."_

Oliver just shook his head. And he'd been wondering last night why he thought he was going crazy.

**"**Uh-huh. Well, since singing doesn't appear to be one of them I'd say your secret's still safe," she told him, and, smiling every so sweetly, turned on her heel and left.

Oliver closed his eyes and hunched over his thighs. His hamstrings were killing him. So were his quads. And every other muscle in his legs. Who knew squatting around all night would be so hard on a guy? He needed some ibuprofen. And water. And coffee. Lots of coffee. "Please tell me you at least had the good manners to break into my house with a latte so I don't have to kill you."

**"**Sorry, boss."

**"**Then at least tell me you found her so I don't have to kill you," he said, hanging his head between his knees, trying to breathe the tightness out of his lower back.

**"**That I can do. Mission accomplished."

Oliver sat up. "Seriously?" Of course, that would make it Lance one, Queen zero.

**"**Seriously. So, now that you know, do you think you could put some pants on? 'Cuz I'm comfortable working for a guy who sleeps in a separate bed from his totally hot fiancée and then parades around half-naked in front of other guys, but, you know, not everyone is. You wouldn't want to make a habit of it."

**"**Just shut up and tell me where she is."

**"**I don't know if I can do it in that order."

**"**Jesus, what did I do in a past life that I am surrounded by smart-asses now?" Oliver asked. He stood and tromped into the closet. "Right. Ok. Using small words you can understand: Step One is tell me where she is, and Step Two is shut up," he said, pulling on a pair of jeans.

Bart shook his head. "No can do boss."

**"**No, really, you can. You just put your lips together and then you keep them together."

**"**And you have to ask why you're surrounded by smart-asses?" Bart asked, flopping down on Nanny Lizzie's old rocker. "The 'no' is for 'no, I can't tell you where she is.'"

**"**Why not?" Oliver whirled back to the room, t-shirt in one hand, socks in the other. "You said you found her!"

**"**And then I lost her. She disappeared."

**"**How does that happen? Can't you just run around until you find her again?"

**"**Dude, she didn't just turn suddenly and blend into the crowd. She _disappeared_. There was smoke and then she was gone. Like in _Harry Potter_. Bang. Gone."

Oliver walked over the bed and sank down. "You mean, she used magic?"

**"**Well, you said she was a sorceress, right?"

**"**Yeah, but, why would she? Wouldn't that attract attention?" If he'd gotten nothing else from their background search, it was that this woman did not want attention. Not as a sorceress. Not as anything.

**"**It was just us in the alley – "

**"**She made you," Oliver groaned. "Doesn't that faster-than-the-speed-of-light thing usually keep people from seeing you?"

**"**You try following someone at faster than the speed of light and tell me how that works out," Bart retorted. "I had to either slow down or risk starting a cyclone circling her."

Oliver sighed. He knew that. Rather, he should have known that. Meta-powers weren't the answer to everything – look at Dinah, for Chrissakes – and he had done nothing to train the kid on what to do when they weren't. "Ok. So. Where was she when she disappeared?"

**"**Right here in Metropolis, behind a bar. The Jungle, down by the old stock-yards."

**"**Good. You should take her picture in this afternoon, show it to the bartenders. If they recognize her great, otherwise give them your number." He gave the kid a smile. "You accomplished more last night than I did." This wasn't strictly true. He didn't know what he'd accomplished yet, exactly, and wouldn't until they'd reviews all the photos and made positive I.D.'s on them, which would take few days. Or, knowing their level of man-power, a few weeks.

Ok, so Bart had accomplished more than he had last night.

Bart grinned. "So does this mean I get run point when we storm Clark Luthor's Evil Lab of Evil?"

**"**No. It means you get to gloat when you go report to Dinah. We still have a lot more work to – "

**"**No, no more," Bart declared. "Not until I get my legally mandated twenty minute meal break. I've been up all night and you have no idea how hungry I am."

**"**... Do on your training," Oliver continued. "Next couple of patrols Dinah or I take, I want you with."

**"**Man, you gotta be kidding me. On top of looking for this Zatanna whenever I'm not following Clark? I do have a day job, you know."

**"**Yeah, and how is that following Clark thing been working out for you lately?"

**"**I was the one who found that barn with the servers."

**"**And he hasn't been back there since. Or any other place more interesting than Radio Shack, according to you."

Bart looked a little peaked. "So, you're saying he knows I was following him too?"

**"**I'm saying you may need a little practice," Oliver said, gentling his tone a bit. The kid was starting to look a little terrified. "Work it out with Dinah. There are some protein bars in the kitchen if you – " Oliver broke off as a blast of air hit him. Pulling on his t-shirt, he followed him out of the bedroom only to find a bemused and slightly wind-blown Lois scanning the room for additional surprises.

**"**Did he just come through here?" she asked.

**"**Yeah. I am really sorry about this."**  
><strong>**  
><strong>Apparently deciding the danger had passed, she threw the parsley in her hand into the juicer. "So what does he do? Turn into wind?"

**"**Nah, he just runs really fast."

**"**Like Ultraman?" she asked quietly.

**"**No, he can't fly, and I doubt he benches more than 170. Plus the only really dangerous thing about him is his mouth."

**"**Really? 'Cuz I'm pretty sure he pinched my ass on the way out."

**"**We're working on that." He fell silent as Lois liquefied her vegetables and the tiny, raging motor drowned out all other sounds. He didn't have any meetings until this afternoon, he thought. He could take the morning and spend it with her. Take her to breakfast, show her the remodel on the Teague Tower, have a conversation that didn't end in a fight. That would be fun, he thought.

The whirring stopped.

**"**Is that all you're going to have? Because I have the morning off. We can go grab some maple-nuts and some coffee," he told her. He kept his voice casual, but watched her closely, and she must have known he was, because her eyes came up to meet his.

**"**I'm flying up to Gotham for the day," she answered. "Lilah's going to be showing me some condos there."

**"**In _Gotham_?"

**"**I'm applying at the _Gazette_and the _Gothamite_. Max thinks he might be able to get me interviews at both of them."

**"**When did you decide to do this? And why? There are tons of other journalism jobs in Metropolis besides the _Planet_."

**"**In radio, for instance?" she asked sweetly. Too sweetly. "No thanks. Besides, I doubt I would get any of them with the mark of Luthor on me. That brand doesn't scare the rustlers as much in Gotham. And they've got that creepy bat-guy running around there. An interview with him could be my ticket to a Pulitzer." She took a sip of her foul-looking smoothie with relish.

**"**Oh, so is that what this is really about? 'You don't need me anymore' is Lois-speak for 'You can't advance my career anymore?' If I gave you an interview does that mean you'd stay?"

Lois set down her drink. "That's a disgusting insinuation."

**"**And yours implying that I cheated on you with Dinah isn't?"

**"**I never said – "

**"**No, you insinuated it. I _work_with her, Lois. Just like I work with Gina. And they're both pretty much pains in the ass, which, if anything, means I need you more, not less."

Lois looked away, toward the general direction of the refrigerator, which she'd months ago decorated with a load of magnets featuring vintage ads of smiling housewives making cartoon balloon statements like "_The best part of waking up is the whiskey in my cup_."

**"**Lois?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I can't do this right now. I'm sorry. I can't." She grabbed the smoothie again and turned back to their old bedroom.

**"**No, Lois – " he grabbed her free hand.

**"**Oliver, please. Don't." She stared at him, troubled. Troubled, but determined. He knew that look. She was going to go to Gotham today if she had to hitch a ride in the back of a semi to do it.

He let go of her hand, ran his over the granite of the counter-top. "So the truth comes out," he said. "I'm not irresistible to women after all."

**"**I'll call _Mythbusters_," she said. "I'm sure they'd love to devote an episode to that."

**"**Maybe they'll hire you."

She rolled her eyes and walked out of the kitchen. "Your bird-phone's screeching," she called back.

He cocked his head and listened. Sure enough, _Ornithology_was trickling in from the guest room – his bedroom, now. He swore Lois must have super-hearing; he could barely make it out himself. Maybe they should put her on the team. Maybe she'd stay then. He stood in the kitchen, weighing his options. He could follow Lois to her room, pick another fight, make her miss her flight and go to breakfast with him. On the other hand, Dinah preferred to communicate through her Sybil-like array of online identities. She only called when the situation had gone from "urgent" to "dire". Dammit.

He walked back to the guest room and answered his phone.


	4. Chapter 4

Per usual, Oliver was taking his own sweet time answering. To be fair, it wasn't as if he could simply whip out his cell phone in front of a bunch of VP's or photographers and start chatting away about hissecret force of meta-powered crime fighters, so Dinah figured she should probably cut him some slack in that regard. Unfortunately she wasn't in a slack-cutting mood. Thanks to Bart she was already running late and her own non-secret identity career meant she wouldn't be able to have this conversation for another eight hours if he didn't pick up soon. Then, just as she was about to give up hope, the fake ring-tone in her ear cut off and Oliver asked: "What happened?"

"Well, hello to you," she answered.

There was a pause before he responded. "Where are you?"

"Uh, my car. Which is in the parking garage. Which means I'm not at work, which is where I'm supposed to be right now, so if you could – "

"So you're alone?"

"Yeah. Where is this going?"

"I assumed you couldn't talk openly, but if you can, it'll save a lot of time if you just tell me what happened."

Oh for fuck's sake. Dinah banged her head against her steering wheel a few times. "Nothing's happened," she gritted out. Well, Bart had happened, plowing into her just as she'd opened her front door, but other than that, no.

"Then I'm confused. Why are you calling me?"

"Because I need to talk to you," she said, slowly.

"I thought we were trying to be discreet."

_Deep breaths, Dinah. Deep breaths. _**"**Yeah. We are. But the Lower Midwest Leadership Conference starts tomorrow and I'm supposed to be local celebrity chatting up all the big donors for the next two days. Lots of eyeballs on me and no spare time. Which is why I'm calling you from my car, in my parking garage."

"Who's going to be patrolling?"

"You. You keep sneaking out anyway, so you might as well. Anyway, speaking of discretion, I need you think back to your Robin Hood days and tell me who I could talk to about selling something quietly, but not too quietly, if you get my drift."

"That depends on what you're trying to sell."

"Zatanna's father's magic manual."

There was another pause. Either he was not yet fully awake – unlikely, if Bart had been the one to wake him – or he was just having his usual mental processing problems. "Do you have Zatanna's father's magic manual?" he asked.

Of course she didn't. What the – _deep breaths_. "No, but that's not the point. The point is to make her think we have it so she'll approach us about buying it."

"And we do that by spreading word among the discreet and disreputable that it's for sale. Huh."

And that, she supposed, was all the compliment she was going to get for her genius idea: _Huh_. Good thing she wasn't calling him for compliments. It was a little sad she had to call him at all on this, but none of her dad's old buddies from the force knew who would broker something this weird and difficult to appraise.

"Exactly. The question is who would be a go-between for an old, hand-written, possibly stolen manuscript?"

"A few guys," he answered. "One in particular. But the point of a fence is usually to provide some insulation between the buyer and seller. Besides which, this guy is going to want to authenticate it before putting himself out there."

Oh. She didn't say that, of course. Instead she thought furiously. "Well, can we ask your guy to arrange a meet? Maybe tell him the item has sentimental value and we would want to make sure whoever buys it is really going to appreciate it."

"Maybe." He sounded doubtful. "It isn't as if this is a Matisse, though. Most people aren't buying home-made spell books for their re-sell value. He's gonna assume that whoever wants it will want it for some kooky reason of their own."

She sighed. Deeply. "So you're telling me that there's no one in the seamy under-belly of the world of rare books who'd be willing to simply do this for the right price?"

"No, but we don't have unlimited funds to throw at this, either." And they were back to money again. That didn't take long, she thought. "Besides," he continued, "have you considered that she may already have it?"

Dinah had, although she'd been counting on him not to consider that himself. Counting on the old Ollie, that is. When she'd first met him he'd been perfectly willing to let her sweat the "small" stuff, but the last few months he'd become a micro-managing gluteus maximus. The problem with the new Ollie, beyond his questions being a huge waste of everyone's time – she was, she noticed, now officially ten minutes late to the station – was that the more he dug into these particular details, the closer he got to tapping the well of his emotional issues again. Maybe if she threw him a bone he'd gnaw on that and be satisfied. "I don't think she does," she said, with the same confidence she used to hock gold coins and security systems for sponsor ads. "Her M.O.I.R.A. entry says she didn't re-acquire the book in Chloe's world until a few years ago, and even then she needed the League's help."

"The League?"

"The Justice League. That's what they call themselves."

"Why'd she need their help?"

She sighed again. Of course he wouldn't want his bone. She was going to have to throw him the pig's ear. "I'm not sure," she said, truthfully. "It just says Lex had it among his possessions when he died and she contacted them for help getting it out of storage in a LuthorCorp warehouse."

He didn't reply.

Oh, hell. She was going to have to throw him the whole damn hog. "It's just, it's Luthor connected," she began, "and things connected to the Luthors ..."

"... tend to remain connected to the Luthors," he finished. He paused for another few seconds, but to her surprise didn't comment on her hypothesis. "Ok. Let's proceed assuming she doesn't have it. What happens when she realizes we don't have it, either?"

Dinah released a huge, silent pent-up breath. She had, as it happened, considered that as well. "We offer to trade services. We help her find it in exchange for her help with Clark. If nothing else it'll give Bart something to do besides play _Call of Duty_and stare down my neckline."

"Yeah, he was just complaining about not having enough to do," Oliver said dryly. "I told him he needs more training. He found Zatanna last night – "

"Yes, and now he's demanding I call him 'Bart the Badass'."

She heard him snicker. He would find that funny. "Did he tell you he lost her too?"

"I kinda read it between the lines when he said you told him he was supposed to start going out on patrol with me. Out of curiosity, when were you going to tell _me_about that?"

"I just did!"

"Because I called you. This is not a good idea. Kid's looking for the Girlfriend Experience. All I have to offer is Discipline. You should be the one to go out with him. You've got the next couple of patrols anyway, and he looks up to you."

He laughed outright at that. "That was smooth."

"The fact is he would whine less with you."

"I wouldn't count on it. He needs to learn and we all need to do our part teaching him, Vic and Andrea too."

Oh God. Andrea'd plop him down in a Spanish conversation class and leave him there." And she'd be right to do it, Dinah thought. Things were going from bad to worse near the border. Maybe when they found Zatanna she could throw a tablecloth over all the blue meth flying over the border and make it disappear.

But first they had to find her.

She'd better not," Oliver said. "Bart's too valuable to waste. Set up a schedule with her and Victor. I'll pencil myself in when Gina doesn't have me going through hoops at the office."

"Ah, no. I am not Gina. Set your own damn schedule."

"Fine. Have Stuart coordinate it."

"Stuart? He's a hacker. He can barely talk to real people."

"He's tech support. Emphasis on 'support'. Since unlike the rest of you,he's actually getting paid, he shouldn't complain. While you're at it,have him email me that photo of the spell book."

"Why? What are you going to do with it?"

"Send it to my guy as bait."

"No," she told him. "No way. This was my idea."

"And if Dinah Lance, champion of law and order, wants to meet with a man about selling stolen goods, what do you think the reaction from said guy will be?"

She scowled. It wasn't that she hated it when he was right. It was just that she loathed, despised, and generally abhorred it. "Fine."

"It's a good plan, Dinah," he said. "Sometimes you just have to delegate. Anything else?"

_How 'bout you take a long walk off a short pier, Queen?_ "Nope."

"We'll talk later," he said, and then she heard the beep telling her he'd ended the call.

She threw her phone down on the passenger seat and stared at the cinder block wall beyond her car hood. Had that happened? Had she really just called to ask him a question only to have it turned into a damn teaching moment? She banged her head against the wheel again. "Sometimes you just gotta play the game," had been her dad's favorite bit of parenting advice when she'd been little. Then they'd both gotten older and it had changed to "Screw 'em." At least in her hearing it had been. Now she just had to decide which to follow.

Her phone beeped. Henry, he of the sandy hair and the water behind the ears, had texted her: _Ms. Lance? Where are you? _She threw her phone back down and buckled her seat belt. She bet Gina wasn't texting that to Oliver. Or maybe she was. She'd like to think so. Somebody should be giving him hell. Softening him up for her. Getting him used to the fact that he wasn't always going to be in charge.

* - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - #

Oliver emailed the photo to Yuri and then sat back to wait. Or rather, did a million other things while the day crawled by, as did the next, and the next. Three days in which he woke up alone, went to bed alone, and in between had to threaten to rip out the newly installed gaming apparatus in the Tower after Bart pantsed a convenience store robber. Three days of discussing the earnings announcement with the board, oil price fluctuations with the strategic planning team and flower arrangements with Gina, who seemed oblivious to Lois' sudden lack of participation in their wedding plans. There were seven grande lattes; five tumblers of Craggenmore; two nights of patrol in which he assigned Bart to follow him at normal speeds and then spent doubling back searching for him; two conference calls on the patent infringement lawsuit Lionel was still pursuing in spite of his recent public announcement of his desire to "renew" their relationship; one luncheon with the chair of the Forest Stewardship Council; one announcement from Victor that he was certain he had found the site of Clark's Evil Lab of Evil (Lance one, Queen one); and one noisy, sanctimonious fight with Dinah over the ethics of destroying Clark's private property.

The last thing he needed – really, the very last thing he needed – at the moment, he thought as he stared at his mysteriously empty glass, was to start questioning whether keeping a known psychopath from regaining superpowers was the right thing to do. With said powers, he'd reminded her, the guy couldn't be stopped, or, you know, _seen_. Had she forgotten that? And when the hell had she decided to start coddling criminals anyway? Wasn't her schtick on her show all about how cops were being ham-strung by paperwork and technicalities and if the Supreme Court just reversed the Miranda decision there'd finally be safety all night and sunshine all day and a unicorn in every garage?

It wasn't until the first fat drops of water hit his arms that he realized he'd suited up and was on the roof, reeking of stanky leather and Scotch. He remembered now he'd emptied the bottle before coming up here. He stood there as the drops fell more abundantly, hitting his nose and arms and neck, dripping down his chin and dribbling below his vest. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night kept him from his appointed rounds, but he'd never patrolled after drinking this much. It was one or the other – that had been one of the rules Lois had scribbled on the back of a coaster and framed for him. The others were "No driving", "No tabs", "No heels taller than 2 inches", "Nobody is that good looking (except for you, Ollie)", and "Buy your own drinks". She'd managed to find her way around some of them (as in: "It totally doesn't count if I put it on _your_tab, Oliver"), but she was adamant about the heels, the cabs, and the patrolling. Not that whether he patrolled was any of her business anymore, but he doubted she would see it that way, especially if she ever figured out he had a security detail tailing her.

Perhaps unconsciously reacting to her reaction to that, he kept himself to a crouch. The interior of his vest had a wick-away lining but even it had not been engineered to stay dry during the kind of downpour this was turning into, and it was beginning to cling to his chest and back. The wet would be hell on the bow as well, but there was no rule that said he had to use it. And Lois had never made a rule that he couldn't fight when he was drunk – except with her, of course.

But while he zipped over the alleys to a rented garage, Lois was buying her own drinks at the Ace of Clubs, where she had seemed to spend every night since her announcement that she was moving to Gotham. This was unlike her – she'd been raised to damn the torpedoes – but in a way itwasa relief from her recent billiarding between sniping on Dinah to bitching about Clark to staring moodily into space. Actually none of that was like her either – well, the bitching about Clark was, but since her firing it had risen to dizzying new heights. She had not been happy when he'd pointed out that crime had been creeping back up in the city since Clark's reign of terror had ended and therefore additional patrols were necessary. "You don't think you're going to replace him," had been her response, which had gotten his back up, which had led to their last fight, which had led to her need for space.

Which was fine. She could keep her space and her new job and her new city and he would keep his. His space, his city, his Ducati. Even Bart would yell at him for riding it in this rain, but it wasn't just a Ducati. It was his mission, and he was going to keep it. Tonight and every night. He may not be capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but he wasn't going to spend his life behind a desk or up in a tower or letting all the pimps and dealers and the bosses who ran them take the chance that someone wasn't watching them tonight. He was going to show this city that justice wasn't about fear and corruption and helplessness. It was about doing what you could, where you could, and right now what he could do was patrol the alleys of Suicide Slums.

He turned over the engine and headed out toward the Payne Reliever.


	5. Chapter 5

Gina jumped at his entrance with her usual alacrity. Oliver braced himself. Alacritous was what he paid her to be, but there were times – now, for instance – when he might have bumped up that pay for a little laxity. Laziness, even. Alas, today was not that day. He didn't even have time to make the offer before she'd begun reviewing the day's schedule. She was, in fact, so full of cheerful helpfulness that she got all the way through to: "Now – messages. You've had two calls from Jerry Saffire regarding the Schott business. I referred him to legal but – " before she looked up and saw the sunglasses. They were a big, hipstery pair with white rims that Lois had bought him as a joke, but they were the only non-Green Arrow version he could find that morning. He looked, he knew, like the kind of jack-ass who spent most of his time making video diary entries about his DJ collective, but better that than the alternative. "Do you … do you need anything?" Gina asked.

"I'm fine. Thanks." Not really, but he was not about to tell his assistant that he was really the kind of jack-ass who'd gotten the shit kicked out of him the night before, by an under-age prostitute defending her pimp. It would have totally destroyed her image of him, for one thing.

Gina hesitated as if to contradict him, but then decided to plow on down her to-do list. "I'll continue to refer him to legal. Speaking of which, legal sent this up – here," she handed him a fat, sealed Tyvek envelope – "for your review."

"What is it?"

"The owners represented by Ross and Small have agreed to the deal. With a few caveats, but nothing counsel wasn't expecting."

He nodded. That was good news. He wished he was in a mood to appreciate it. "Any word from DCK?" Dent, Clark and Kent represented just one of Smallville's former land-owners, but also the most recalcitrant.

"No, but, obviously the hope is that if the others sign on that will put pressure on her to sign on as well."

Oliver doubted it. William Clark had made most of his money representing mining companies in land acquisition deals, and most of Smallville's meteor rock not housed in a QI vault was, technically, still strewn over the former Kent farm. The old man couldn't possibly know its true value, but that wouldn't stop him from doing everything in his power to protect his daughter's claim to it. "We'll see," he said. "What else?"

"Nell Potter called to confirm you and Lois will be able to meet Saturday to finalize the plans for the rehearsal dinner."

Oliver eyed the door to his office longingly. "_The caterer's gotta kno__w,_" Victor had said, and, in his case, that meant Potter Productions ("Weddings, Debuts, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs"). However, since the pretty Ms. Potter would, undoubtedly, feed that information immediately to Lionel, she would not know today. "Sure, sure. Tell her – tell her Lois might be out of town on a story, but I can make it."

"Has Lois joined another paper?" Gina asked. "Should I notify PR?"

"No, she's doing some freelance work right now. Say, if you want to be a real hero, hold all calls until lunch." He hefted the envelope and smiled. "I want to give this a good read-through."

Gina smiled back, tentatively. "Are you sure I can't get you anything? Some water?"

"No, th-"

"Or pop? With ice?"

Ice actually sounded like a god-send. "You read my mind," he told her, and her smile widened. Seizing his opportunity, he made his escape into his office, tossing the envelope on the credenza, sinking into his desk chair, peeling off the shades and dropping his head on his desk. He'd downed three bottles of water since rising and still felt cotton-mouthed. He tried not to drool on the blotter but he didn't quite succeed. Dinah was going to kill him. Dinah deserved to kill him. Last night had been a mistake. A big, fat, bruising mistake. He could still hear the asshole laughing at him, "Who do you think you are? Ultraman?" That's when he'd swung, and the rest was a blur.

He didn't know how long he sat there. However long it took for Gina to get the ice and buzz herself in with a cart carrying a dozen different cans of soda and an enormous, aluminum bowl full of crushed ice with a few zippered plastic bags carefully tucked beneath it. She studiously did not look at his eye while he, in turn, studiously faked sorting through his in-box.

"Remind me to throw a couple of tickets to the Caribbean in your next check," he told her.

"How about Belize?"

"Belize it – "

"Mr. Queen?" she asked after a few heart-beats had passed.

" – is." He finished. "Sorry. Just got something I wasn't expecting."

"Not bad news, I hope."

"No." He smiled at her, and this time the smile was genuine. "Good news. Very good, in fact."

"Congratulations," she said, and let herself out. Oliver again as he re-read Yuri's response: "_Some possible interest. Be here at one._"

On his way to Yuri's storefront he tried to tell himself the glasses had been a serendipitous find. After all, no one would expect to see Oliver Queen behind them, and therefore no one would expect to see Oliver Queen entering a shop with a neon sign advertising "INCENSE BOOKS PSYCHIC READINGS". As it happened, however, Yuri was expecting to see Oliver Queen, so the glasses had to be removed once he'd made his way past the icons and smudge sticks and tarot cards to the counter.

"Hello," Yuri said. "You need poultice?"

"I'm sorry?"

"For eye."

Oliver wasn't sure how to respond to an offer for a poultice from a man who claimed his grandmother had cursed Rasputin with satyriasis and who kept an M4 under his cash register. He decided it was best to be polite. "No. No thanks. You said there was some possible interest in the item?"

Yuri stared at him a moment. "You sure you don't want poultice?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Alright. However, I think we re-negotiate."

Oliver felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. "Why would that be?"

"I have no wish for your family business to be my business."

Oliver's right foot fell back and his knees bent before he managed to take a breath and a little control over himself. "I see. How much re-negotiating did you have in mind?"

Yuri shrugged. "I think... five."

Oliver took a breath. "Two and a half."

"Four."

"Three."

"Four."

"Fine. Where is he?"

"He?" Yuri asked as he led Oliver to the back of the shop. "If it was 'he', I ask for ten." He opened a door that read "Employees Only" and something in Russian. There, sitting at the battered metal desk, surrounded by yellow second sheets of carbonless invoices, a ten-year-old iMac and a giant poster of the Universal Tree of Life with a traced drawing of what might be a tree trunk – or maybe a river, it was hard to tell – taped to it, sat his sister. Tess.

Oliver drew a deep breath.

"Thanks," he said to Yuri. "I'll take it from here."

Yuri lifted a brow.

"It's ok Yuri," Tess said. "Big brother here will be watching out for both of us."

Yuri gave her one blank stare and Oliver another, then turned and shut the door behind him.

"You should have someone take a look at that eye," Tess said.

"I'm fine. Thanks," he said tightly. "What are you doing here?"

Tess smiled, amused, and Oliver was, as usual, startled by how faithfully she managed to mimic Lionel despite the short amount of time she had spent in his care. "Well, unlike you, I didn't come to be inducted into the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill. Speaking of which, how is Lois?"

"You know, one of these days you'll really have to tell me what it was that made you hate her so much, because as far as I can tell, she's never done a damn thing do you."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," she answered, picking up and examining a stained copy of _The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley_. "But now that she's had her soapbox kicked out from under her I'm sure she'll be annoying everyone much less. As for why I'm here, I'd think that would be obvious."

Oliver considered that. In addition to inheriting their father's condescending smirk she'd also acquired his impassive stare. Anything could be read into that neutrality, and anything often was. It was an expression countless skilled negotiators had bet on and lost. The trick he had learned, that they had not, was to never assume he was smarter than a Luthor.

He shook his head. "Not really. No," he admitted.

Tess blinked. "Yuri said you were interested in selling something. A book."

"Yuri told you that?"

"Among other things."

Oliver considered that. Why Tess, a scientist, would be seeking out books on the occult was one question. What Yuri had told her was another. Yuri was in a position to know more than Oliver would have liked, but then Oliver was in a position to know more than Yuri would have liked. Yuri's knowledge plus Oliver's knowledge had so far equaled, well, _discretion_, but Tess' presence in this office added something extra to Yuri's side of the equation. Even the daughter of Lionel Luthor and the sister of Oliver Queen had to step carefully where guys like Yuri – or, more specifically, guys like the guys Yuri knew – were concerned. Maybe more carefully.

"I'd consider your source next time," he told her. "You don't want to believe everything you hear." With that he opened the office door and stepped out. Yuri lifted his head up from the chalice he was showing the woman at the counter and quirked his brow again.

"We'll talk," Oliver said.

Yuri nodded.

"You bet we'll talk," Tess said behind him. Oliver ignored her and walked out of the store, the little tin bell above the door ringing as he left. It tinkled again a few seconds later as Tess followed. That she did so was a given – no Luthor liked the sound of the word "no". He was already on his phone calling his driver, however.

"I'm done, Tess," he said over his shoulder. "I'm not walking on at half-time into whatever game you're playing."

"I don't have a game, Oliver." She whirled around him, all self-righteous indignation. "It's not that complicated for some of us. You want to sell, I want to buy. What is the problem?"

The bell tinkled again behind him and he put the sun-glasses back on. "The problem is – hold on – yes," he told his driver, "I'm done, thanks. The problem is," he repeated to Tess, pocketing his phone, "this book is not something you want to get involved with. It's dangerous and so are the people who want it."

She smiled her smile of condescending amusement again. "That's sweet. But how do you know I'm not one of the dangerous people of whom you speak?"

"I'm sure you are." For what she now knew if nothing else. "That doesn't change the fact that you have no idea what you're messing with here."

"Oh, honey. You have no idea what I – " She broke off, frowning at something over his shoulder. He glanced back but all he could see was Yuri's storefront with its glowing sign and the people walking past it. He turned back to Tess, who was still frowning vaguely, as if she couldn't remember whether she'd unplugged the iron before leaving her apartment.

"Is something wrong?"

She shook her head. "I've got to go."

"Wait – Tess – "

But she was already dodging his LS as she crossed the street. He watched her jog down the sidewalk for a block and then turn out of sight at the Metro Coffee on the corner. He let himself into the car and crawled into the back seat, telling himself he needed to build a hydrogen-powered limo so he could have some goddamn leg room for once.

"Where to?" Kasich asked.

"The office." He craned his neck as they crossed the next intersection, but did not see Tess. He could have Bart … no. He couldn't. Bart did have a day job, after all. He took off his glasses. "You got anything that would help this?"

Kasich took a look back in the rear-view mirror. "That ain't so bad."

"Maybe for you. I gotta look pretty for the cameras."

"Yeah, _pretty_'s the word. An eye like that might be what your rep needs."

"You're a real pal," Oliver said, sitting back as Max chuckled.

The sad part, he reflected as he pulled out his phone, was that Kasich was probably right.


	6. Chapter 6

Seven-thirty. It had been a long day and would be an even longer night, but for once Dinah felt as if she'd accomplished something. In one corner, the preliminary numbers from the conference had come in and giving was up over last year, proof, she hoped, that she'd been a draw for the right demo. In the other, work on the Watchtower was almost complete; all they had to do now was post their "Members Only" signs and they were done. In her view this should have been the part of the process they'd done first, but Oliver and Victor had thought a state-of-the-art security system for their digital art studio, or whatever it was they had told the contractors they were working on, would have raised too many suspicions – as if a room lined entirely in lead wouldn't do that all by itself. Andrea in this case had deferred to Oliver as the voice of experience, and Bart's only concern had been when the sound-system would be installed. So, she'd lost that round, but she knew she'd win others.

And she had, she thought. Maybe not by the rules, but why should she be the only one who had to follow them?

Seven thirty-two. Oliver arrived, looking like the long-lost gay Blues Brother in his white sunglasses and suit. She took a couple of deep breaths and mostly succeeded in not laughing at him. The shiner he sported under the glasses was another matter.

"What happened to you?"

"Suicide Slums," he grunted.

"You went out last night."

"I did. Sue me. You said you had some pictures to take?"

Dinah didn't sigh. She wanted to, but the situation had gone beyond that. It was getting to the intervention stage, which meant she'd probably need to go out to lunch with Lois or do something equally awkward to plan it. On the other hand, none of them had the time to help pull him out of the gutter until this Clark situation resolved itself. She gave in and sighed.

"And recordings to make," she told him. She tapped the retina scanner. "Pictures first. Align your eye here and hold still."

For once doing as he was told, Oliver bent forward a little and stared into the round little box Victor'd dropped by earlier. "I've never seen one that looked like this," he said.

"Hold still," she repeated, re-starting the scan. "Victor built it. Off-the-shelf doesn't adapt as well to non-human anatomical variations."

"And this does?" he asked when the scan had completed.

"I guess. We haven't had a chance to test it yet."

"Huh." Dinah noticed he eyed the device with a little more respect. Maybe "huh" really was high praise coming from him. "Hey, where did you find this?" he asked.

Of course, it might be all he was capable of articulating before fluttering to the next topic. She glanced at the arrowhead he was holding.

"That? Stuart found it. He left a note." She pointed to a Post-it half-hidden under Victor's hardware, from where Oliver rescued it.

"'Tripped on this. Exclamation point. Please clean up after yourselves. Your mother doesn't work here.' Hah. Funny." He crumpled the note and pocketed the point. "Now what?"

"Now, read this," she said, handing him the script, "into this." She indicated the microphone next to the scanner.

"_These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot_ – wait, _The Crisis_? Are you kidding? Every Tea Partier in the country will be able to break in here."

Why, she wondered, did he have to make every little thing about politics? "Not if they can't say it in your dulcet tones, they won't. Start over."

Oliver rolled his eyes but he read it. He'd have a decent radio voice if he worked on his enunciation, she thought. As it was he sounded a little mush-mouthed. Could be the childhood in California, she thought; after decades in Metropolis he still sounded like some kind of pot-head surfer to her.

"Well, that's done," he said. "I'd better – "

Wait – he was leaving. She sucked in a breath.

"Dinah?"

"Bart stopped by while Victor was here," she said quickly.

"Oh?"

"He confirmed the lab location," she continued. _Just stick to the facts and you'll be fine, Dinah._ "All the equipment Victor thought would be there was, and it looks as if he was siphoning power off one of the lines coming off the dam. However, there is an occupant. Bart said she'd be date-able if she showered and shaved."

"Is she some kind of prisoner?"

Dinah shrugged. "Prisoner of her own addiction maybe. Bart said the place was surrounded by camo-covered pot plants. He thinks she's growing it."

"Why would Clark put an Evil Lab of Evil in the middle of a marijuana plantation?"

"Cover," she said. "Literally and figuratively. The lab's in what used to be a root cellar and the plants provide a story for the energy theft and equipment deliveries, if anyone should take an interest."

Oliver looked thoughtful. "That might give us a way out. Make a call to the coppers and let them do the dirty work."

"Yeah, that's what Victor thought, but I think it might take more embarrassment than an anonymous tip might provide," she said glumly. "I talked to my dad. Conventional wisdom says law enforcement in that part of the state has been looking the other way for awhile when it comes to propagation."

"So we go up the chain of command and contact the feds. They've fielded operations without notifying local law enforcement in the past."

"Andrea mentioned that."

"What, did you guys have some big conference call about this?"

Yes. We're getting to that part, Oliver. "Timing's still a factor with the feds. The DEA doesn't like to look bad – they're going to want to check things out, build a case before they go in guns blazing. That could take a couple of days. Our thought was to tip them but alert the media too; that way we keep attention on the area and any comings and goings. That should be enough to keep him away and in the meantime the sheriff's office will need to be seen as doing something. You think Lois would be up for some free-lancing? The _Journal_'d love to have a scoop on the _Planet_, and once they run the story I can follow up on the show."

"That … would be a change of pace for you."

"Anything can be spun," she shrugged. "In this case, I'd say the recession has led to underfunding of basic services in the area. The sheriff's department was overwhelmed and clearly the legislature needs to re-think their priorities and allocate some additional dollars to the counties for law enforcement."

He gave her a small round of applause. "That's impressive. Cynical, but impressive."

"It'll keep it topical," she said airily. "Besides, I can always riff on how, if there weren't so many environmentalists freaking out about the idea of building a modern coal-gasification plant to replace that ancient dam, the people in that community would have better employment options and wouldn't need to grow pot to feed their families."

"Yeah, that's what'll sell it, I'm sure. How do you plan to spin the lab?"

"Ms. Needs-to-Shower-and-Shave was looking to expand into meth."

"DEA's going to know the difference between Clark's set-up and a meth lab."

"Yeah, and they'll report it to DDS and DDS will or won't decide to announce they've foiled a terrorist plot to blow up Nowheresville, Kansas. If the media speculates beyond what the government is willing to admit to, there will be some explaining to be done, and not by the government."

"So you don't plan to expose Clark."

"I don't see how we can. Victor says he owns the land, but you have to trace the ownership back through so many trusts and holding companies it'll be hard to pin operational knowledge of the growing on him, and it's not as if the tenant'll make a credible witness. Not to mention that without the data all we, or the government, for that matter, have is a bunch of equipment and some building code violations."

"Why wouldn't we have the data?"

Dinah braced herself. "Because we decided Victor should wipe it. Completely. He wouldn't make a copy. We conferenced Andrea in and we voted, three to two."

"If I'm counting correctly, you only had four people present at this shining example of democracy."

"We assumed you would want to keep it." She wrapped her hand around her ergonomic mouse, squeezing tightly.

"Oh gee thanks. I guess. Why the hell was I not invited to participate?"

"Victor hacked into Gina's schedule, it said you were meeting with some Chinese trade official."

"And you couldn't have waited two hours?" He was starting to look angry. She squeezed the mouse tighter. They had made the right decision, she told herself. They had.

"Time is of the essence. It's a two-hour drive out to this place, plus he has to create some kind of diversion to get our resident Nancy Botwhin out of the picture. Plus," she added quickly as he opened his mouth again to interrupt, "I can't do this unless we respect the laws we're able to. I spent my entire childhood – my entire _life_ – watching my father break rules in order to bring the bad guys in. He was comfortable with that and I am too. Of course I am, I'm a freaking vigilante. What he wasn't comfortable with, what gave him the ulcer and the heart-attacks wasn't the bad guys, it was the guys who were supposed to be good and were really only in it for themselves. The politics and the graft and the corruption; that's why he had to retire. I can't be one of those guys. _We_ cannot be those guys. We can't profit from this."

He didn't say anything for a moment, just looked at her hard, his jaw tight, his eyes unblinking. "What about Victor?" he asked at last. "Don't you think he's earned the right to that research? I'm assuming that his was the other vote to keep the data."

"His was," she nodded.

"Do you blame him?"

"No. But even he admitted that he'd rather the data was destroyed than that it might be stolen from us someday. No system is invulnerable."

Oliver stepped back a few paces, shoved his hands in his pockets and stared up the rosettes. She stared at him until that became awkward, then played with some of the icons on her screen for a minute or two. That, however, grew old quickly. It wasn't as if this was a difficult decision. Either you were ok with re-selling stolen property or you weren't. And yes, this was the Green Arrow: selling stolen property was what he did. They, the team, were more than that though. They were … an _example_. She'd never thought of it that was before, but that was what they needed to be. Uncorruptible. Unwavering. But proportionate, as well. It was why they didn't just go out and shoot all the muggers and purse-snatchers of the city. They weren't Ultraman. They were something better than that.

"So, does that I mean I can't torrent any more episodes of _Game of Thrones_ using the team's OC3 line?"

Lost in her thought, Dinah jumped.

"'Cuz I gotta say, I really hate the way cable is sold in this country, and HBO is so stuck in the nineties when it comes to distributing their product," he continued.

Was he serious? He couldn't be serious. Could he?

"Hey, don't look at me that way," he said. "Lena Headey is smokin' as a blonde."

Dinah absorbed that piece of information. He was making a joke. Well, as much of a joke as a man who could afford pay people to laugh at his jokes probably knew how to make. "When do you even have time to watch t.v.?" she asked.

"I don't. I'm planning a marathon for a rainy weekend."

"How … I … " She trailed off, shaking her head. "Trust you to fall for the villain."

"Cersei's not the villain. She's just a woman trying to survive in a man's world."

"No she's not. She's a power-hungry bitch. _And_ she's sleeping with her brother."

"Hey, watch the spoilers!" he said, as from his jacket pocket Sister Sledge began proclaiming: _We are family! I got all my _ – "Tess?"

Tess? Tess Luthor? Tess Luthor was calling him here? In the Watchtower? No. No, she wasn't. Not anymore. She waved like a crazy person to _stop, hang the hell up, destroy that phone_, but he ignored her. "What happened?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes mid-wave. Apparently "huh" wasn't his only catch-phrase. She froze at his next question though: "Did he hurt you?" He stood a little straighter as he asked it. Evidently just hearing of a damsel-in-distress was enough to switch him into hero mode. One of these days, she thought, she was going to meet another woman who hadn't played that card. There had to be –

"Hold on, hold on, hold on," Oliver interrupted. "So your problem is what, exactly? … Yeah, I guess I'd be worried too. … Well, Lois'll be there. Wait, hold on – " he covered the phone with his hand. "Do you think Tess could spend the night with you?" he whispered to Dinah.

"No!"

"Clark's after her," he hissed.

"We're not supposed to know each other!" she hissed back.

"Shit." As if he'd forgotten. He uncovered his phone. "I'm back. … I'm at the office right now. I can meet you in fifteen... No, I'll talk to Lois. … Sure. Bye."

"Why would Clark be after Tess?" she asked. "She's a Luthor."

He shook his head though, already dialing.

"Lo – yeah. I'll be home in fifteen. There's a catch though. Tess is gonna show up at the apartment in a few minutes," he said quickly. "For one," he added after a long pause, "she's in trouble … Yes, I believe her. For two," he droned on, "she's got some information I need and I can't exactly debrief her at the tower, and for three, she's my sister, it's my apartment, and you broke up with me, so – "

He broke off and pocketed the phone, eyes hard.

"You and Lois broke up?" she asked after a few seconds of working her mouth dumbly.

"Yes, and if you don't mind, I don't need any crap about that right now."

"I wasn't going to give you any crap," she said quietly. She wasn't. She wasn't going to say anything, because she had no idea what to say. "I'm sorry?"

"Thanks." He pulled out his phone again and scrolled over the screen. "We're not making an announcement until she's got her own place and I can get some security installed."

"Oh. That makes sense." It did, in an ass-backwards, Oliver Queen sort of way.

"I don't want Lionel thinking she's a viable target just because we're not engaged any more," he added, still poking at the phone.

"Totally," she replied.

"So Victor's on his way to the pot farm?"

"Yeah."

"And you're on patrol with Bart tonight?"

"I … yeah – "

"Get Bart over to the LuthorCorp Tower or their building a few times. Make it obvious Bart's watching for Clark. Hopefully that'll keep him in the city tonight."

"Okay, but is – "

"We'll touch base in the morning when Victor gets back," he said, and with that he walked out the door.

She stared after him, snapping her mouth shut when she realized it was hanging open. She couldn't believe it. He'd done it again. Turned the conversation into some kind of assignment meeting. It had to be a Luthor thing. It had to. Not that she'd know from experience, but she'd lay money they all did it. Ever single last bushy-maned one of 'em.


	7. Chapter 7

He was half-way home when Lois' security team called. She'd left the building, climbed into a cab and was on her way to the Ace of Clubs. All to the good, he thought. Now he wouldn't have to watch Tess and Lois circle each other like a couple of hyenas fighting over a carcass. He had hoped, once upon a time, they might become friends: gone shopping together, cooked Christmas dinners together, threw each other baby showers. Of course that was not anything he could ever admit to anyone, especially not Tess, who was huddled inside her car in a visitor's stall in the garage. She jumped when he knocked and stayed skittish all the way to the penthouse, looking behind her every few seconds and flinching when the bell rang to announce the arrival of the elevator.

Nervous or not, however, her first words when they entered the penthouse, even before she sat, were "Where's Lois?"

"She's meeting some friends," he replied.

Tess' posture relaxed. "That's convenient."

"It is," he said. He noticed she'd left her short trench-coat on, as if having to put it back on would slow her down. "Do you want something to drink?"

"That would be nice," she said absently.

"What would you like?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Water's fine."

"Nothing stronger?"

"No. Not tonight."

He nodded. "Ice?"

"No. I prefer ambient."

"Ambient?" he asked as he filled a glass from the filtered tap. "Is that a fancy way of saying 'not too cold'?"

She gave him a nervous little smile. "Sort of. More like room temperature."

"It's 72 degrees in here."

"I know. It's a … lab joke."

"Ah. Science humor. Way above my head." He handed her the glass and poured himself one as well. He thought he should probably be ready to go as well.

"I don't know. Your head's pretty far up there."

"And with now the bean-pole jokes."

"Did kids used to call you that?" she asked, curious.

He looked up from the faucet. "A couple of times, I guess."

"I went through a big growth spurt right before I left the orphanage," she said. "Six inches in six months. I tripped over everything."

"That sounds familiar. I grew a foot between thirteen and fourteen." He sat himself down in the chair opposite where she huddled over her water.

She raised her glass. "Let's hear it for the Luthor genes."

"Here, here," he replied, raising his own.

They both drank, and then a silence settled over them. Tess appeared to zone out for a few seconds, her face settling into an expression of blank anguish. She'd told him Clark had come to her apartment, that he hadn't "been himself", whatever that meant to her. From Oliver's perspective that would mean that Clark hadn't tried to kill anyone, but Tess obviously had a very different sort of relationship to him.

"What happened, Tess."

She glanced up, startled, then fidgeted with her glass for a moment. "I have no idea. I really don't. It's possible that I've gone completely crazy."

"You mean, you imagined Clark showing up at your place and acting weird?"

"No, he definitely did that."

"Well, what did he do that was so odd?"

She shook her head. "You're not going to believe this."

"Try me."

"Alright." She set her glass on the coffee table, and spreading her arms along the back of the couch, looked him straight in the eye. "He asked me to marry him."

Oliver had told her to try him. The upside was that she'd confided in him, truthfully. Anything that crazy had to be the truth.

The downside was that, right now, he couldn't say any of the things that were on the tip of his tongue to say.

"Ok," he answered after a few beats. "Um, aside from the obvious, normally that, in and of itself, doesn't warrant going to ground. If it did I'd have to sell my stock in Tiffany's. Was there anything else he did?"

"Aside from the obvious, no, it doesn't," she answered, smiling. "Well, let's review. One. He came to my apartment. He NEVER comes to my apartment."

"Why not?"

"He said we couldn't risk Lionel finding out about us."

Okay, he couldn't not ask. "There's actually an 'us'? I mean there's … a 'you guys'?" he asked in what he hoped was a normal tone.

She laughed a little. "Surprised?"

"Yes."

"I'm disappointed in you. I'd have thought you would have had all kinds of perverted suspicions about Clark and me. Guess you didn't inherit as many of the Luthor genes as I thought."

Nope. He'd had no clue. "I suppose that means Lionel did know."

"Oh, he knew."

"So Clark's fears about going to your place were correct but inadequate."

"Yes, but try telling him that. Which brings us to Two. Clark doesn't do anything he's told. Not if he doesn't want to do it. Tonight, however, I told him to go."

"And he went?"

"He protested, but he went."

"So, does that mean I can assume you said no?"

She threw him a look, one he recognized from a dozen fights with Lois. It must be something they taught girls on that special day in fourth grade when they took them into another classroom to talk about "changes".

"Have you ever said 'no' before?"

She smirked at him.

Oliver supposed that had been a dumb question. Certainly it wasn't a question he wanted an answer to. "Ok, uh, so why did you say 'no' now?"

She picked her glass back up and studied it a little, gathering her composure. It was something he recognized from a thousand fights with himself, weighing what to say and what not to. He wondered if Lex had done it as well, when he wasn't asleep at his desk in the back row or correcting the professors. He probably had. It was another one of Lionel's bequests, unwanted and unavoidable.

"You really are going to think I'm crazy," she said at last.

"I told you. Try me."

"I said 'no' because he wouldn't have asked me if I hadn't wished for him to ask me."

"Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was an 'us', isn't kind of normal to think about getting married?" he asked. Normal, that is, if they'd been planning to appear on _My Big Redneck Wedding_.

"Yes, I've spent endless hours pouring over back issues of _Martha Stewart Weddings_ in anticipation of this day_,_" she said dryly. "You misunderstand. I didn't _want_ to marry him. I _wished_ to marry him."

"Sounds to me like you're having fun with semantics."

"I'm not. There was this woman I saw outside the bookstore. She was acting strangely, and I followed her."

Oliver sat up. "Is that why you took off like that?"

She nodded. "I wanted to know why. Turns out she'd heard about the book from Yuri and wanted to make a deal. She told me I could have whatever I wished if I'd just help her get it."

"So you wished for Clark to propose?" he asked. He realized he was gripping the arms of his chair. He forced himself to relax and let go.

"I didn't come out and say that, no, but it's the only thing I can think of for _why_. The insane part is I didn't believe her. I just thought she was full of shit. I told her to stay away from me and then I went back to the university."

"And then you went home and then Clark showed up. Sounds as if there was a bit of a time delay there. If you really 'wished' for this wouldn't it have just poof! … happened?"

"It did. He spent the afternoon getting Lillian's ring out of Lionel's safety deposit box before he came to see me."

"Oh." He thought for a moment about that. "Was wanting Lillian's ring part of the wish?"

"What? No! Talk about creepy. It's not as if she was really Clark's mother anyway."

"But he thinks of her as his mother."

"Yes, but -"

"So maybe that's a clue that this is not what you think it is. Maybe he really wants to marry you – you know, aside from the when-you-wish-upon-a-crazy-woman-you-followed-from-a-money-laundrying-facility-for-the-Russian-mob thing."

She looked at him as if he were crazy. "Do you have any idea what Lionel will do when he learns Clark has that ring? Clark does. Or at least he should. After -"

"After what?"

She studied the glass again. The hunted looked she'd worn earlier had returned. After a moment though she drew a deep breath and lifted her eyes again. "Lionel tried to poison him a few months ago.

"What?" He sat forward. "When?"

She blinked a few times, and he realized he's slammed his own glass on the coffee table so hard some of the water had splashed out. "Soon after he got back from wherever it is he'd gone."

"From wherever Lionel had gone, you mean."

She nodded.

He sat back. He couldn't believe they'd missed that. Granted, given the time-frame it was likely before they'd recruited Bart, but – how could they miss that? "Christ."

"You see the problem."

He did. He saw the problem, and what a fucked-up problem it was. If Lionel had succeeded, so many other problems would be solved. But to kill his son? A son he had killed to obtain? A son who, as far as Lionel knew, couldn't be killed? Somehow he'd known Clark was vulnerable. Of course he had. He'd known Clark had lost his powers. He probably knew how he'd lost them. And a _Traveler _son without all the world-changing powers promised by the prophecy wasn't an asset. He was a liability.

But he was still Lionel's son.

"The problem is Lionel's a sadistic bastard," he said.

Tess gave him a pitying little smile. "Oh, you couldn't be more wrong. Lionel couldn't care less if what he does brings pleasure or pain. The _problem_ is that Lionel spins plans the way a spider spins webs. He's got a web for every purpose and the instant one of us little insects flies into one he's on them like the big, hairy tarantula he is."

"You think this will interfere with Lionel's plans somehow." And what plans would those be? he wondered. Tess seemed to have a better bead on them than he did, what with all the inside-gossip pillow-talk she probably did, and oh God, that was not a thought he'd ever wanted to think. On the other hand, that inside gossip might be useful. It was, as Lois would say, a disgusting thought, but it was possible the only way to save Tess might be to use her.

"Let's just say I've never been a Daddy's girl."

Okay, that was slightly less informative than he'd hoped it would be. "He must have had some plans for you when he took you in."

"I was an experiment," she said bitterly. "The unknown variable in his highly controlled household. He wanted to know how the rest of the specimens would react."

"And how did that go?"

She smiled again, draping her arms again on the back of the couch. "Not as he'd hypothesized. Not that that that stopped him. He just started spinning new webs. It's what he does. It's what he'll do unless the gods themselves come tear up his webs and crush him underfoot."

"I doubt Arachne had a beard," he joked.

She shrugged. "You never know. The truth gets distorted when it turns into a myth."

"I'm surprised that's not what you wished for."

"I know, right? If I'd any idea she serious I would have. At the least I could have wished for a million more wishes."

"Not world peace?"

"Do I look like Lisa Simpson to you?"

"Nah, I'm sure you don't want to precipitate an ..." he trailed off, since the alien invasion was already here. That thought brought him back to the purpose of his visit to the bookstore. M.O.I.R.A. Hadn't mentioned anything about wishes but if this woman could grant them ... "Think you could ID her? The woman you talked to earlier?" he asked suddenly.

Tess' eyebrows shot up. "Are we heading on over to the police station?"

He stood up. "Kind of." He was probably crazy for doing this, but then the whole situation was crazy. And he'd found his lucky arrowhead in the Tower when he'd gone in for his biometric scans. Maybe a little crazy would bring him luck. He grabbed the file-folder with the photo of Zatanna out of his bedroom and brought it back out to her. "Check this out." He pulled the photo out. Tess took it.

"Yeah, that's her," she said, surprised.

Oliver froze for a moment. "That's the woman who offered you the wish? You sure?"

She another look at the photo, then lifted her face to study his. "She must have been wearing a wig, but yeah."

"Son of a bitch." He considered throwing his glass across the room, but with Tess appraising him the way that she was he decided against it.

"She was the one you were expecting to meet at the bookstore." It was most definitely not a question.

Oliver took a breath, studying his glass. He wondered if she would see it as a tell. Of course she would, he thought. If he saw it she would see it. "I've been trying to track her down."

"She was the buyer you were planning to meet today."

Damn. He reminded himself he was relying on the crazy right now. "Yes. Yes, I was."

Tess picked up the photo again. "Why would she approach me about it and not you?"

Oliver hadn't considered that. Had Zatanna somehow connected Bart to him? "Maybe she was scared off by my bad-ass black eye," he offered.

"Yeah, that'd do it," she said flippantly, but her brows were drawn together in thought and her finger was tapping the back of the picture.

"It does sorta raise the question of what you were doing there to begin with," he said. "I mean, why do you want to buy the book?"

Her finger stopped tapping. "Why do you want to sell it?"

"I asked you first."

"You can't use it, can you," she said, oblivious to his rebuttal. Again, it was not a question. "You want to find someone who can."

"Which I'm guessing wouldn't be you, unless you've recently gotten grant money to cook some eye of newt in a cauldron. So why would you want it?"

"Documents of pre-scientific cultures seeking to exploit nature have always fascinated me," she said, adopting a business-like smile he was sure the Met U administration ate up with a spoon.

"Bullshit. You're not a collector; since Lionel cut you off you don't have the cash for it, and even if you were no one gets as worked up about pre-scientific documents as you were this morning unless they're Indiana Jones."

"Maybe I'm looking for the Holy Grail," she smirked.

"Don't." He leaned forward. In his pocket he could feel the arrowhead digging into his thigh as the fabric over it stretched. "It's not worth it. Those dangerous people we spoke about earlier? This woman is one of them, and it looks to me as if she's made you an offer you couldn't refuse. You're a piece of work but you are my sister and I hate to think what she might do if you can't hold up your end of the bargain."

"I can hold up my end of the bargain."

"How?"

"You could sell me the book."

Actually, he couldn't. Not yet, at least. There was no reason to get into specifics, however. Embrace the crazy, he thought. "That assumes I would want to. I might, but Lionel's not the only one with plans."

"And your plans would be to recruit yourself a pet witch?"

Tess wasn't the only one who could ignore questions, he decided. "If she's been paying attention at all she's bound to know how you used your wish, and in my experience she's always paying attention." That, of course, was a downright lie. He had no experience with Zatanna at all, but that also was not necessary for Tess to know. "Who's to say she wouldn't take the offer back by taking Clark out?"

Tess' eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?"

"No. If you'd been paying attention you would have heard me to offer to help. I might sell you the book. If I wanted to. But first I would need to know why you wanted it yourself."

"Like father, like son," she muttered. Oliver bristled, but her shoulders were slumping. "It's fitting, I'll say that. The truth is, I don't give a damn about it. But it's exactly the kind of thing that would interest Lionel."

He frowned. "Why's that?"

"He collects old books of magic. He's got a whole shelf of them in his office at LuthorCorp. They feed into some plan or another," she said said vaguely. "He gets pretty worked up about them, too. Before Genevieve died the two of them together nearly drove some poor girl in Smallville crazy going after one she owned."

"Genevieve Teague?" he asked.

"The one and only. You know I wouldn't be surprised to find out one of these days that Jason's a long-lost brother as well."

"Yeah." He answered. An idea sprang up from the depths of his mind and began popping up and down like a deranged whack-a-mole he couldn't quite hit. "Wouldn't that be a kicker?"

"So what about the book?"

Oliver pulled himself back from the frustration in his mind. "It's not in Metropolis," he said. The lies were coming easily to him this evening.

"Where is it?"

"Not here. I'll have to go get it."

"And that's it?"

"It might take a few days."

"You're going to just give it to me?"

"No. We can discuss an appropriate payment once I have it in hand."

"I think we can discuss an appropriate payment now."

Oliver forced himself not to drum his fingers against the armrest. "Alright. What do you think would be appropriate?"

"Five thousand."

"Really?" He couldn't help but laugh. "Where would you get that kind of money?"

She gave him _that_ look again. "Where do you think?"

"Yeah, you're gonna have to forgive me if I say no to that."

"I suppose we could work out a payment plan."

"I don't need the money."

A wariness entered her eyes. "What then?"

He'd learned tonight he wouldn't tell him anything if he asked her outright, not unless she was afraid – and not just for herself. But every once in awhile she would let her guard down, let something slip.

"You ever think about working in the private sector?" he asked.

She quirked a brow. "Are you offering me a job in the growing field of indentured servitude?"

"Maybe. If that's what you call not having to beg for money every two years to pay the two doctoral candidates and an undergrad that are your only staff."

"And you would offer that money to me for free."

"For your work. You're brilliant, Tess, and I want that brilliance to make some pivotal, patentable discoveries for QI."

"I enjoy basic research."

"I'm not saying you can't do that too."

She stared at him a moment. "You're serious."

"It's a win-win. Actually it's more like a win-win-win, with two win's for you."

"And only one for you."

"I'm thinking long-term."

"You'll understand then that I need some time to think about it."

He nodded. "I thought you would. Hey are you hungry at all? I haven't eaten since breakfast."


	8. Chapter 8

After some digging in the fridge they ended up with green beans and some scrambled eggs. They ate companionably enough, keeping the conversation to the food and what they'd liked as kids and what they still wouldn't eat even now. For Tess that included yams and chayote squash and anything with cayenne pepper. Oliver, on the other hand, couldn't think of anything he at least wouldn't try. He told her that after a few months of roasted rat on the island, he'd finally learned not to be picky. She was quiet after that, and a few minutes later mentioned she was tired.

He was fairly certain Lois would react even more badly to stumbling home and finding Tess in her bed than finding him, so he offered Tess the guest room for the night. This invitation complicated by the fact that he didn't know where the linens were kept or what, exactly, to do with them once he'd found them. The last time he'd had to fend for himself in the house-keeping department there hadn't been sheets and pillows and whatever that white quilted thing was that went beneath the sheets and above the mattress. Nor, for that matter, had their been a mattress. Looking back he probably should have admitted he didn't know what the white quilted thing was called, since actually naming it "the white quilted thing" when she refused to understand which "that" he was pointing to made her whoop with laughter. But that was fine. A woman hadn't laughed at him since Dinah'd snickered at his glasses earlier this evening; he figured he was about due.

After the bed was made he wished her an awkward good night and wandered back out into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door, shut it, opened it again and stared at the rest of the green beans and the half-eaten container of hummus and half-case of Michelob Ultra left in it. The beer looked vaguely tempting but with Clark in stalker mode that was out. That meant patrol was out too. Well, that was it then. No beer and no patrol (and no girlfriend). He'd be chopping through the door to Tess' room with an ax in no time. He closed the fridge. He'd made an enormous gamble that night, and now his adrenaline was high. He needed to work off some of that energy, settle his head so he could think. Find some focus.

Peeling off his shirt, he headed for the roof.

The building had an exercise studio, but he liked working on the more uneven terrain of the grass planted up there. It was good training. Unless he could design an arrow to lay some portable, no-skid sprung vinyl flooring down when he saw a bad-guy approaching, he doubted he would ever have a real fight where he didn't have to take the ground into account. Plus when the clumps of the big prairie grasses got to be taller than he was, like they were now, it was easier to pretend he was somewhere wild again. Somewhere the only thing he had to worry about was hunting his dinner. Somewhere where his half-sister wasn't sleeping with his nemesis. Or, hey – how about somewhere where he didn't have a nemesis? That would be nice. Maybe somewhere where his nemesis was actually one of the good guys. As if that was ever going to happen.

On the other hand, he thought, he never would have believed the sorceress he'd had Bart running around in circles to find would have been hiding in a seven-foot-tall stand of big bluestem on his roof, but there she was, pushing her way out of it. She just needed a drum roll to make the effect complete.

"Some view," she said, strolling to the edge of the roof and peering down.

"Generally I like to share it with the kind of guests who come with invitations."

"And here I thought you were supposed to be charming."

"Here I thought my security system was supposed to work. How did you get up here?"

She shook her head. "If I told you that they'd kick me out of the magician's union."

Oliver shoved his hands in his pockets and wrapped his fingers around the arrowhead. He shook head. At the time Chloe'd slipped it into his pocket he'd thought there couldn't possibly be any more bend for him to go around. How wrong he'd been. "So. You do perform. I wondered."

She turned back to him and smiled. It was very mysterious and come-hither and doubtless the perfect distraction to whatever sleights of hands she performed. "Madame Xanadu's in Chinatown, every Friday and Saturday at midnight: _Mademoiselle Giselle et sa Theatre du Fantaisie_. Next time you're looking for me you can find me there."

"Good to know. I look forward to seeing you."

"I look forward to being seen."

"Yeah. Speaking of seeing you in odd places, my sister ran into you this afternoon. She told me about the offer you made her."

If she was surprised by his little revelation, she said nothing. "How's that working out for her?"

"As well as can be expected. There's only one problem. She doesn't have the book."

"No, you do." Her eyes narrowed. "It's not yours, you know."

"The state of Kansas might disagree with you there." Now that, he thought as the words tripped over his tongue, was a stupid statement. The point was to win her sympathy, not antagonize her. He'd reminded himself not to spend an entire evening with Dinah and Tess the next time he needed to negotiate something critical.

"You can't use it."

He shrugged. "I know."

"Then to you it's nothing more than another dusty, expensive book on your shelf. But to me it's everything. My father wrote that book. He wrote down everything he'd learned from his father and that his father had learned from his. It's my heritage, and it's all I have left of him. That's something I'd think you of all people would be able to understand."

"I guess I would." Despite his flub earlier, he couldn't have asked for a better opening. He wandered over to the ledge next to her, establishing a sense of connection. "So if I give it to you, what will you do?"

She smiled again, a little eagerly. "Whatever you wish."

He laughed. "You know, you'd be surprised how often I get that."

"No, I don't think I would be," she said, her smile turning rueful. "But nobody who's ever made you that offer could give you what I can give you. The one thing you truly want. Your heart's desire."

"Do you just go around that offering to anyone with a Barnes and Noble bag in hand?"

"This isn't a joke."

"No, I believe you," and the funny thing was, after his talk with Tess, he did, "but that's not what I meant. What I want to know is if I give you this book, what will happen to Tess? What will happen to Yuri? I mean, I'm assuming you've made him truly psychic by now or whatever it is he wants to be -"

"Dead languages," she said.

"What?"

"He wanted to be able to speak in dead languages."

Well, that was a little anti-climatic, he thought. "And, he can now?"

"I don't fool around."

"That's kind of the problem. What if my heart's desire was to bomb Canada back to the Stone Age, or have all my business competitors suffer sudden, fatal heart attacks?"

"Because nobody wants to bomb Canada. Nobody ever wants anything like that. Not in their heart of hearts. You might think you hate someone, but nobody hates anything more than they love something else, even if it's only gravy fries."

"That sounds disgusting."

"Well, I did notice there's no giant mound of potatoes and cheese curds behind us," she teased.

In spite of himself, Oliver looked back. Just a lot of native grass and a couple of Adirondack's. Zatanna laughed. Oliver grimaced. Maybe he should quit his day job and just take his new doofus act on the road.

The problem was he already had a night job, and he needed to get on with it. "So you're one of those people-are-really-good-at-heart people?" he asked her.

"Not always. Mostly I've seen that people want to be happy, even if they don't know up here how to do that," she said, tapping her skull. "But in their hearts they know it's better to be happily married now than to get revenge on an ex-lover. It's better to have their son healed and whole than it is to get back at the person who maimed him. It's not something they have to think about. It's instinctual." She said "instinctual" very slowly. He wondered if the seduction was meant as a distraction or if she was actually attracted to him.

Then he snorted. The only thing that seemed to be instinctual for him was suspicion. "I guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree on that one."

"If we must. I'd still bet that what you want is to be happy."

"Maybe." His reality didn't seem designed for happiness. "What about you? From the way you were talking earlier it sounded as if having your dad back would be your heart's desire. Why don't you just wish for the book?"

"It doesn't work that way. I can't wish for things for myself."

"Ah. Sucks to be you, I guess."

"My dad always said having to work for what you wanted built character."

"Sounds like a very dad thing to say." She smiled in agreement, but her suddenly sad eyes flickered to the stream of lights below. She was either a very subtle actress or she really did miss her father, he thought. "The thing is," he continued, "is that I need more than happiness. I need help."

* - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - #

So far, the best part of Dinah's evening had to be the fact that it wasn't raining. Nothing else came even close to the fact that she was dry. Not the fact that Oliver was busy entertaining a Luthor; not the fact that Victor hadn't comm'd in since reporting that he'd arrived at the farm; not the fact that Bart would. Not. Shut. Up. From the moment they hit the streets he started in with a character-by-character run-down of who in BC's Angelic Warrior Host, who were actually a collection of aliens, mutants, and demons attempting to earn their way back into heaven, would win in fights against Amazing's Wolf Pack – only one of which was a wolf. Who could rip steel with his claws. And talk.

"So he's a were-wolf," she said absently.

"No. Absolutely not. He's a shaman who becomes possessed with the totemic spirit of his ancestors. And kicks ass."

_And the difference between them would be, what, exactly? _"And why does he win the fight against the Persephone character you say looks like me?"

"Prosperine," he corrected. "It's because he's got all of this spiritual energy that he can use to boil her demon blood. It's like that time – "

"Quiet." They were walking down Tedesco, past Morelli's Spirits but not quite to the playground. The main sounds were the interstate in the distance and the thumping bass of a car a few blocks away, but she thought she'd heard something else.

"What -"

"Less talk, more listen," she said.

Once he closed his mouth, the sounds became distinct. A woman was yelling: "That's right you son of a bitch" and then a car door slammed. A domestic? In progress, or finished? An engine started, tires squealed, and the woman's voice was drowned out by the car roaring toward them. After it passed the only sound was the soft buzz of traffic half a mile away.

"What just happened?" she asked him.

"Um, a car drove by?"

"Yes, it did. But where did it come from? Who was driving it? Where's it going?"

"Seriously?"

She glared. "Did you really think we're out here to talk about your comic collection?"

"I … okay. Geesh. Um, he came from over there," he said, pointing down the street the car had driven.

"And where is 'over there'?"

"It's there. It's like three blocks over."

"What is the name of the street three blocks over?"

"Are you – yeah, you're serious." He shrugged. "I don't know."

"No, you don't, and that's why we're out here. Surprisingly enough, a lot of this job involves calling 911 and you don't want to be the guy who can't give an address over the phone because he doesn't know where he is. If you're running and you overshoot -"

"Dude, I haven't done that in years."

"You also don't want to be chasing anyone into alleys you don't know or into a building you think is empty that isn't," she continued. "You need to know what you're running into. And you of all people on the team should know the city like the back of your hand."

"Right. Lesson One: Become a human GPS. Got it."

"There's more to it than knowing the map. You gotta think like a cop on the beat. You gotta notice what's going on around you. Are there any weird sounds? People yelling, dogs barking? Get to know the neighborhood. You should know what businesses are opening, and which are closing. You should know if there's a lot of activity going on around a closed business or if a business suddenly pops up that never seems to be open."

"Like, in case they're running drugs or something out of it?"

"There are other things to look out for there; a business selling drugs is gonna try to look as legit as possible. But think about what Vic found at Cadmus. A legitimate off-shoot of LuthorCorp, but there was nothing going on inside the building with the sign out front. These are the things we need to be aware of."

"So, Lesson Two: Know Thy Hood."

"Yep. Moving on," she replied. "What is that guy wearing?" She nodded her head at the guy trotting down the steps of some cruddy 60's-era apartment block and into a saggy Olds parked on the street.

"A hoodie. And some jeans."

"What color hoodie?"

"White. No – gray. Maybe. How am I supposed to see colors in this light?"

"What was the license plate number on the car?"

"Man, you told me to check out the guy, not the car!"

"Ok. Let's say you were out here on your own and the guy was running from the building and then jumped in the car and sped away. What would you be able to identify about him or the car?"

"Well, the car's a boat. Old. Guy was skinny. He looked pretty young."

"So, if you found out he'd lifted some jewelry from a little old lady in the building, how would you find him again? Check out all the old boats being driven by young, skinny guys?"

"No, I'd run around until I found _that _old boat being driven by _that_ young, skinny buy. Seriously, it wouldn't take that long to find him."

The irritating part, Dinah thought, was that he was right. It would probably take him two seconds to find the right car. That was no excuse for sloppy fundamentals though. "Impulse, we're doing this so you can learn what to do when you can't use your powers. Like if you're busy tracking a target and need to be able to report something else that happens to the police or to Stuart so he can follow up. Of if you're in broad daylight in a crowd of people who might notice and wonder where the hell you've disappeared."

"Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do," he shrugged.

"Yeah. Sometimes." She tried to sound patient and affirming and all those other things she was expected to sound like because she was a girl. "But sometimes you gotta remember the big picture. Capturing your target. Protecting the team. Protecting the identities of the team, and that means your identity too."

"Ok, so Lesson Three is Pay Attention to Details."

"You're learning," she said.

That's when she was knocked to the ground.

For two, three, terrifying non-breaths she clutched the side-walk and willed herself to inhale. When her body finally obeyed and she was able to scramble up, Bart was gone. Where, she didn't know. Why, she didn't want to think about. Either she had just experienced one of those micro-bursts Metropolis was famous for, or –

"He's back," Bart said, apperating in front of her.

"What? Who? Where did you go?"

"I was following him."

"_Him_ him? The him who's as fast as you?"

"Almost as fast, and yeah, it was _him_."

"But Victor found the lab," she said. And hadn't made contact since he'd arrived.

"Looks like he was a day late and a few dinero short. He's back," Bart answered.

In the distance a woman screamed.

Like that, Bart was gone again.

Dinah broke into a run, thanking herself for ditching the undercover hooker look for once and patrolling in boots with sensible heels. It was four blocks to Payne, made a little shorter she cut through the alley, the vacant lot and the lawns of two foreclosed-upon shot-gun houses. There were more screams and yelling as she ran, men's voices as well as women's. A crowd was gathering.

As soon as she hit Payne she saw it, people and a few cars bunching around Mickey's Diner a few blocks south. Flames appeared to be coming out of the wall, but as she ran toward it the fire began to die. A few people were clapping, and one man whistled. It was hard to see what had happened with all the gawkers milling around but she she could guess.

No. She _knew._

When she got to the diner Bart was no where to be seen; probably he'd shot off to call 911 someplace where he wouldn't be identified. About half the crowd was gathered around a young girl, a working girl by the way she was dressed, sobbing and holding the body of a man who could have been her father but was probably her pimp. The other half were over by the wall, taking photos with their phones. The fire was out but you could still see its charred remains, a "U" surrounded by an upside-down pentagon.

Dinah willed her body to breathe again. They were so fucked.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

He was warm, and he had been for some time. It felt good. His tendons were relaxed, his muscles slack, his eyelids heavy, his cock alert. Unlike discomfort, which was usually persistent and annoying and demanded attention, ease was something he didn't usually grasp until it was gone. This morning, he felt it: the lightness of the sheets as he rolled from one side to another, the silkiness of a woman's thighs against his knees, the friction of his stubble on his pillow.

Oliver's consciousness moved back to his knees.

Actually, it moved more to the thighs they'd brushed against. He didn't remember going to bed with an extra set of thighs, and yet, there they were, on their sides, one stacked one over the other, the lower one stretched out and the upper one bent at the hip, inviting him closer. The fact that there was another pair of strange thighs in his bed at one time would not have been surprising, but that was back when the only form of "protection" he knew anything about was a condom. Life had changed since then.

Now, strange thighs in his bed was something of a rarity, and he had wonder how it had come to pass – and what would happen now that it had. It could mean Lois had come home and crawled into bed, disregarding that he was in it, which would mean he and Lois would be having what she called a "discussion" later on. If , on the other hand, he had invited Zatanna down for a drink and one thing lead to another, it would probably mean he and Lois would later be having what she called a "fight".

He hadn't invited Zatanna down for a drink, though. Not that he remembered, anyway. She'd told him she'd consider his offer and then she very prosaically took the elevator to the street. Nor had Lois come home. His security team had called him a little after two in the morning to tell him she'd gone home with the bartender. When she got her ass back to the apartment that too would lead to a fight, but right now he had a bigger problem to worry about: Who was sleeping in his bed?

Oliver sat up.

Then he breathed a sigh of relief. Unless Tess had gone out in the night to visit her stylist, he was safe from the very worst. Then again, "safe" was a relative term. Safe from having the breath knocked out of him, he was not. He had told Zatanna last night that he believed she could do what she said she could do, and he really thought he had. The database had said she could do magic, and Tess, who admittedly was splashing around in the shallow end of the crazy pool but was still smart as a whip, had said she could do magic. He'd believed them. He had. It was just that he had never actually seen the results of magic. Real magic. With real, blonde, curly-haired results. Lying in his bed.

Lying naked in his bed.

That was unexpected. If it was the one, blonde, curly-haired woman who had temporarily been in his life_,_ which it appeared to be, lying naked in his bed wasn't something he'd thought she would do. Despite her choice of one of Lacey's lingerie dressing rooms for their last rendezvous, he hadn't pegged her for the kind of woman to just take it all off and slip into a man's bed. Well, admittedly she'd started stripping in front of him in the hotel room, but that had been casual, just prepping for their mission. She hadn't been coming on to him.

So maybe it wasn't her. Maybe a random woman had gotten lost, randomly wandered into the lobby of the building, randomly by-passed the security system and randomly gotten into his bed. And maybe this random woman just happened to color her hair the same shade of honey-blonde, have the same arch to her nose and the same point to her chin. Maybe she also randomly wore the same flowery hairspray and the same earthy-sweet perfume.

No. No "maybe". It was Chloe lying there, still fully asleep, her lips slightly parted, her eyelids flickering over some mental image only she could see, and it wasn't right, leaving her exposed like that. She would hate that. He would hate that on her behalf, if he were anything other than the pervy gawker he was. He pulled at the sheet, trying to get it up far enough to cover her, but it was pinned by something. After a few more unproductive tugs he realized the something was probably her, so, leaning down, he whispered in her ear: "_Chloe_."

"Hmmmff," she replied.

"_Chloe_," he repeated, a little more loudly.

"Aaarnnfff." For emphasis, she turned her face into the pillow.

He should probably shake her, or something, he thought. For a few seconds his mind lingered on the "something": The dip of her waist. The swell of her hip. The side of her breast pressed against the mattress.

Right. He should stick to repeating her name. People's brains were supposed to get excited when their names were repeated. Extra blood flow to different regions. Yeah.

Carefully, he leaned down and brushed the hair back from her ear. "Chloe."

That, finally, got a reaction, although not the one he was looking for. "No tickling," she growled.

Oliver pulled his hand back. "I wasn't tickling."

She guffawed into her pillow. "Yes, you were, and you promised me you wouldn't." She lifted up a finger and shook it at him. "Not before eight."

"I would never promise that," he said. Of that he was certain.

"Oh, but you did," she answered, still into her pillow. "I was there. Heard it from your own mouth." And with that, her pillow bounced off of his face, with way more force than he would have expected it too. He grunted. She gasped. "What happened to your eye...s?"

"I was on patrol and got in a fight," he explained, but that was plainly not the answer she'd been looking for. With a jerk, she pulled the sheet up to her neck and bounced off the bed, leaving Oliver to scramble for the bedspread.

"What happened?" she asked, tucking the sheet around her. "Did you use the box? Where's Lois? Why -"

A gust of wind interrupted her, lifting her tangled curls and nearly blowing off the sheet. With it came an indignant Bart, hands on his hips and a stink in his eye. "Good question. Where is Lois. You know, your fiancée?"

God, the kid's _timing_. He needed to be put on meteor rock pick-up for a month, Oliver decided. "Not here. Since when did that become your concern?"

"If you hurt her, I swear on my copy of Warrior Angel issue 66 that I will make you sorry."

Oliver pinched the bridge of his nose. "Bart, let me make this clear: there are to be no more early morning, late morning, mid-afternoon, early evening, or late night fridge raids on this apartment. Is that understood?"

Somehow, Bart managed to look affronted. "That is not why I'm here!"

"Excellent. You got thirty seconds to explain."

"Because you haven't been answering your phone! We've been trying to call you for the last two hours, but I guess cheating on the chick you're gonna marry is a bigger priority."

"This is so very literally not what it looks like," Chloe interjected.

"Yeah? Looks to me as if you're wearing the bossman's bedding."

Oliver was going to kill him. Just as soon as he figured out a way to slow the kid down. Maybe with some kind of super-sonic stun arrow. Unfortunately, as he'd told Dinah earlier, Bart was too valuable to waste. Or kill. "Look, I didn't want every barista and waitress in the city to know this, but Lois and I broke up last week."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. Now apologize to -"

"Elizabeth," Chloe offered. Oliver frowned. Then he remembered what she'd said the last time she was here about not getting involved with people in this reality.

"Sorry," Bart told her. "So Lois is single now?" he asked Oliver. "You think you could put in a good word for me?"

Oliver's eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, you know, it is kind of soon and I totally don't want to be the rebound guy. Let someone else be her shoulder to cry on."

"Your thirty seconds are long since up."

"Well maybe I thought we could use a little privacy first," he said. He rolled his eyes and nodded over his shoulder in Chloe's direction. Chloe, for her part, failed to repress an _aren't-you-just-adorable!_ grin.

"Bart, you appeared out of nowhere right in front of her. And even if you hadn't, she knows."

"Knows what?"

"Everything." More than Oliver did, at any rate.

"What, like, you've been telling her stuff?"

"I've been working with her, yes. So far she's preferred to remain anonymous."

Bart turned and eyed Chloe. "Does the rest of the team know?"

"Bart. Tell me why you were trying to call me."

"I've been trying! We were calling you because Ultraman's back."

For the second time that morning Oliver felt as if he'd been kicked in the solar plexus. "What?"

"You know, Ultraman? Otherwise known as Clark Luthor? Evil billionaire by day, evil vigilante by night? Him? He's back. Zoomed by me a little slower than the speed of sound last night, killed some pimp, left his little laser tag and flew off."

"That's not possible," Chloe said. "That mineral I used, the super-heated blue kryptonite? That effect is permanent. It shuts down the production of the hormones that allow him to convert solar radiation to energy. It was the subject of some pretty exhaustive research by a top-notch scientist from his own planet."

Bart eyed her again, this time with a little more interest. "Send Professor Top-Notch back to school then, 'cuz the guy's back. Like I said, saw him with my own eyes, running his silver-medal finish and crushing the wind-pipe of that pimp. Some professional ladies we talked to afterward said the guy showed up and started wailing on a girl couldn't have been more than 16. Then next thing they know the guy's dead, that symbol's burning into the wall behind them, and they're all clapping."

"For Ultraman," Oliver said dully. "Where was Dinah in all of this?"

"She came later. She tried to talking to the girl about what happened, but she was pretty shook up."

"Where's Dinah now?"

"She's at the Tower trying to contact Victor. He hasn't called in since early last night."

"He's not at the farm?"

"I dunno. She had me running around trying to find the U-man. No luck there, so she told me to get your ass out of bed."

"Mission accomplished."

"Well, technically, you're still in it."

"Now's not the time, Bart," Chloe groaned.

Bart opened his mouth to protest but Oliver cut him off. "She's right. First order of business is for you to get out to the lab and check on his position."

"Did Victor go out there alone?" Chloe asked.

"Shouldn't I be checking up on this Zatanna chick, so we can figure out a way to stop him?" protested Bart.

"Wait. You guys are working with Zatanna on this one?"

_Zatanna._

"I thought you knew everything, Blondie."

"Don't talk to her that way," Oliver snapped. _"How did you get up here?"__"If I told you that they'd kick me out of the magician's union."_

"What? Like what?"

"Like that." _"__She told me about the offer you made her." __"How's that working out for her?"_

"Oh, sure. _That_. Because -"

"Would you two SHUT UP," yelled Chloe.

"Couldn't have said it better myself." All three of them, Oliver, Bart and Chloe included, jumped at the sound of Lois' voice from the doorway. "If I'd have known we were having a pajama party I would've bought some extra Saran Wrap. And worn pajamas," she added, eying first Chloe and then Oliver.

She sort of had, Oliver thought, since she'd most likely slept in the clinging, leopard-print dress she had on. "Emergency debrief," he told her. "Lois, some of the team have spotted Ultraman in action."

Lois' eyes bulged as if he'd smacked her with a 2 x 4. "You told me he lost his powers."

"He's got them back. Somehow. We don't know how. Bart, you take Elizabeth," here he gestured to where Chloe had sunk down on the edge of Lois' gigantic curl-up-and-read chair, huddled inside her sheet, "and get working on that. You," he turned back to Lois, "are about to pack a bag and -"

"Excuse me?"

"This is not negotiable, Lois. You want to have me arrested later for kidnapping you, fine. Right now we concentrate on keeping you alive. Dominic's downstairs, he'll take you to a safehouse."

"Dominic? Is he the night-shift goon or the day-shift goon you've had following me?"

Before Oliver could reply, Bart piped up. "Miss Lane? Lois?" he asked with all the courage of a man aware he was about to sacrifice himself for the greater good. "It's not just bossman here who's worried about you."

Lois glared. "Why are you still here? You were given an order."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't 'ma'am' me. Move!" she repeated.

"Oh, we're moving," Bart answered, dutifully walking over to the armchair and swooping Chloe up, sheet and all. "We are so moving, aren't we Blondie?"

"Like an 80's charity rock anthem," she said right before they both disappeared.

"New team member?" Lois asked.

"You could say that."

"What does she do?"

"What?"

"Her power? What does she do? Shape shift? Save hypothermia victims with the power of naked body heat? Compel people to speak with her Bedsheet of Truth?"

"No," Oliver answered as he watched the now-empty chair where she'd sat. "She messes. She has the power of super-messing."

Lois glanced at the bed. "Yeah, that seems about right."

"How is it," Oliver sighed, "that you are so good at giving orders but absolute crap at following them?"

"The General used to wonder that too."

"I'm serious, Lo. You were his primary critic in the media; he's not going to give you a chance to sound off again." He left the real reason she was in danger left unsaid; telling Lois she was just a means to any man's end, including revenge, would just prolong the argument. "You cannot be where he expects you to be."

"I'm not helpless."

"Against him? Yes, you are. We all are."

"I have that meteor rock you gave me."

"Yeah? Where is it now?"

"My purse." She opened the envelope clutch she held in her hand and frowned. "Okay, it's in my other purse."

"You're going to have to make sure you have it on you at all times from now on. And you are going to stay with Dom or one of your other guards at all times until this is all over. I'm sorry," he said, throwing his hands up in defense as Lois opened her mouth to protest. "I would never be able to live with myself if anything happened to you."

She folded her arms and took a good look at him. "Ok. I'll be a good girl and go with your goon. But don't think we are not going to have a good long discussion later. This is not over."

But it was, he realized as she was swallowed up in the depths of her closet. It was over, and it had nothing to do with her withdrawal or the separate bedrooms or her decision to move to Gotham. It had to do with him. It was over, and, if he'd been thinking, it had been since Chloe slid that arrowhead in his pocket.


	10. Chapter 10

It didn't seem fair, really, that Dinah'd had practically a front-row seat to the story of the year and she couldn't go after it because the world's fastest man was slowing her down. They needed to implant a chip in him, some kind of tracking device she could use to at least know where he had been even if his power made him too Heisenberg-uncertain for her to know where he was. She drummed the fingers of one hand against her keyboard and clicked the stations of Watchtower's many monitors endlessly with those of the other, waiting for that cow Catherine Grant on _Good Morning Metropolis_to scoop her, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, waiting for Bart to get back and report.

Which he was not doing. She drummed her fingers a little faster. She'd still get decent ratings off the guest interviews and call-ins, but she'd really want to break this one. She'd _been_ there, dammit, talked to the freakin' witnesses and everything. Not that she would be able to say any of that on air, but it would have to give her some kind of edge. Wouldn't it? She hoped it would. She could use the break. Breaks were getting hard to come by, what with Victor missing. She knew she should be doing something besides nothing, something to help find him, but she wasn't sure what that would be. Victor and Stuart were the keyboard wizards; she was just a moonlighting pundalist who'd pounded way too much caffeine in the last forty-five minutes.

She tried to tell herself that was why her heart was racing and her mouth was dry. That was what was making her stupid. It wasn't because Victor, besides being preternaturally pretty, was religiously reliable, and would have made contact by now if he was able to. It was definitely the coffee. That and waiting for Cat's blonde head to fill her screen, informing her and the rest of the city that Ultraman was –

"Jesus H. Christ!" she yelled as an enormous swath of fabric came out of nowhere to switch her face before collapsing, with a grunt, on to the floor.

"A little help?" Bart groaned.

"I'm trying!" the pile of fabric grumbled. "I think you're on top of the sheet."

Dinah frowned. She knew that voice.

"No one minds if you get up without the sheet. Really," Bart answered.

"Chloe?" Dinah asked.

"Dinah?" Chloe answered. A face emerged from the pile of cloth, the face of the woman who'd gotten her tangled up in this whole knot to begin with. Actually, quite a bit more than face emerged. A neck and a shoulder and most of her chest emerged too, much to Bart's enjoyment below.

"I thought your name was 'Elizabeth'," he said.

"Sit up," Dinah told him, yanking at the material. She managed to free enough of it for Chloe to stand up and re-arrange it so it more-or-less covered her. "Is that a sheet? Why are you wearing a sheet?" she asked. In retrospect she decided that bit of stupidity was also due to the caffeine.

"It was what was available," Chloe told Dinah, "and yes, I'd appreciate it if you called me 'Elizabeth' here," she told Bart. "I understand there's a situation? Ultraman's back in business and Cyborg's out of commission?"

"How do you know that name?" Bart asked.

"Because I really do know everything," Chloe answered, shuffling over to the workstation at the desk. "Except where Cyborg's at right now. And why I'm here. And why I don't have any clothes. And where I can get some of that coffee I smell. And how to log in to this system."

"Oh, here, I can get you in," Dinah said, jogging over there. She didn't know why she didn't think to do it before. "You didn't use, you know, that thing you use?"

Bart threw his hands on his hips "What 'thing' would she be using?"

"No, I didn't," Chloe answered, grumpy. "I have no idea how I got here. Maybe somebody in your reality used theirs and it transferred me over? The only problem is I'm dead here, so that would defy even the laws of Kryptonian physics."

"Well whatever happened, it's great to see you." It really was. Dinah had the giddy, irrational feeling the cavalry had arrived.

"There's a '_your reality_'?" Bart practically yelled. "What does that mean? There are _other_ realities out there?" An eager smile broke out on Bart's face. "Are you, like, from the fifth dimension or something? Do you concurrently exist in all times? Is that how you know so much?"

Dinah exchanged a look with Chloe, who shrugged . "It's more like a mirror universe," Chloe said, typing something into the system. "Except we don't read things backwards or scream before we get hurt. It's pretty much the same as here, apart from it being there. Where was Cyborg's last known position?"

"So when you say you're dead here, but you exist there, does that mean we exist here but are dead there?" Bart asked slowly.

Dinah gave her the address of the farm and watched Chloe look up its latitude and longitude. "Nope," Chloe told him. "You exist."

"There's another me? That's awesome!"

"It is," Chloe agreed. "And the best part is my world's you can get me a cup of coffee even before I finish..." Chloe smiled at him and at the coffee sloshed on her sheet. "Thanks."

Bart beamed back. "So, is there a Canary in your world?"

"Yep. So knowing Clark Luthor is now faster than a speeding bullet, we know that Cyborg could, technically, be anywhere in the world. However, we also know that there are a limited number of places Clark could bring him without raising questions, and that most of those places are either owned by LuthorCorp or are so isolated Clark probably doesn't know any more about them than we do. So I say we start our search pattern beginning at the farm and moving systematically from there to the closest LuthorCorp facility, then to the next closest, et cetera."

"Is there a reason he'd want to stay close to the farm?" Dinah asked.

"It sounds as if he's just gotten his powers back recently, which means that if he has a base he's been using regularly I'm guessing it would be one he could get to easily by ordinary means. Bart, after you check the farm, we want you to head south to …" she paused. "Lexington. Looks as if the Luthors own a wind farm there. When are you scheduled to be at the station?" she asked Dinah.

"Well, nine, usually," Dinah answered, a little taken aback. Probably the caffeine slowing her brain down again.

"But it'll be a big news day for the crime and punishment beat. You'd better shower and get over there. It'll look weird if you're not on top of this."

"I guess," Dinah answered.

"Wait, why am I the one doing all the work here?" Bart asked.

* - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - #

Oliver didn't bother to shower. Where he was going it wouldn't matter, and the clock was ticking. Tess was gone. The security feeds showed her leaving, hair tousled, her shoes tucked under her arm, half an hour before Lois arrived. That meant she'd left before Bart's ruckus, which would have been a relief if he didn't have so many reasons to worry about where she'd gone.

Nor did he have any way of finding out until Bart reported in. At the moment, he had to concentrate on what he could do, which was yanking on yesterday's clothes and dialing Gina. Either Tess had colluded with Zatanna, played him like a fiddle and escaped to plan world destruction or she hadn't. The dice he'd thrown last night had yet to land, but either way he had a job to do.

Gina picked up on the second ring, her "Hello?" brisk and efficient even at six in the morning.

"Gina. Good morning." He unlocked the Lexus and climbed into the front seat. "I know it's early, but I need the helicopter ready in fifteen."

"Will you be returning today?"

"Yes, but cancel all appointments. Something personal's come up."

_Beep. _He had another call coming in.

"Is everything alright?"

_Beep_. He took a glance at the caller ID. "Trusty Couriers" was attempting to reach him.

"Yes, thanks. I have another call coming in."

He ended the call and switched over to the "courier". "Man, where are you? You are needed!" Bart groaned.

"The question is where's Cyborg," corrected Oliver. Traffic was still light at this time of the morning; with any luck he'd get to the helipad in the fifteen minutes he'd given to Gina.

"Not at the farm. Neither's the farm girl. Just lots and lots and lots of lovely Mary Jane."

"Ok. Do for NinjaStriker what you did for me this morning and rendezvous with Canary. You're gonna see if he's left any virtual crumbs for us to follow."

"When this is over you're gonna explain why the computer geek gets an awesome code name like that and I get Impulse."

"No, I'm not. Where's Watchtower?"

"Yeah, I know, I know. I'm supposed to be memorizing street names. I've been a little busy the last few hours."

"I meant our new friend._ Blondie_."

"You're naming her after the building?"

"Yes." Oliver rolled his eyes. "I'm naming her after the building. Where is she?"

"In the building. Seriously, I think she'd like 'Blondie' better."

"I doubt that." He also doubted whether Watchtower was the safest place for her. He'd sent her off with Bart because she'd been clear, at their last meeting, that "_I can't be involved_", but Clark knew the Tower and he knew her from it. If he was going to get her out of this mess and back to her own reality in one piece, it was probably best if he sent her to the safe house. "Okay, I'm going to give you a phone number on the condition that if you ever dial it again your refrigerator privileges are permanently revoked. It's 710-132-0517. Once you get NinjaStriker to the Tower I want you to call Lois and tell her that you and Watchtower will be meeting up with her and Watchtower's going with her. Got it."

"I don't think that's going to work."

"I call Lois on that number all the time."

"No, I mean, Blondie's not going to go for that. You may not have noticed this, but she's a little bossy. She had a headset on like two seconds after we got to the Tower."

"Watchtower knows how to follow orders," Oliver replied. Well, she'd allowed herself to be tied up that first time they'd met. She hadn't stayed tied up very long, true, but the point was that she hadn't put up a fight.

"Uh-huh. And where are you gonna be in all of this?'"

"Right now your mission is to get Watchtower to safety and to find Cyborg, understood?"

"Sure," Bart answered after a brief moment during which Oliver got the impression he'd had to reject every other response that came into his head. "Impulse out."

Oliver hit the END button a second time that morning and dialed a new call.

"_For what city?_" the automated operator asked.

"Smallville," he replied.

"_For what listing?_"

"Smallville High School."

* - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - # - - * - & % - #

Once at the helipad, Oliver strapped himself in and took a deep breath. Kasich was waiting for him, looking a little disgruntled, but moments like these were why Oliver paid him the big bucks, and Kasich, like Gina, knew not to question it. Of course, Kasich, like Gina, would probably eventually get his own back. Just before take-off Gina had not-so-subtly emailed him the white paper on the Chinese solar panel industry by the members of the strategic development team he had been scheduled to meet with today. Personal issues or no personal issues, she was telling him, he still had a company to run. Not for the first time he debated just telling her and be done. If she knew what was really going on...

... she would never be safe. She would be in the exact same danger Lois was in, only worse, because Gina would think it was her job to help him. The way Chloe obviously thought she needed to help him. The way she had helped him so strategically in the past. If he'd been thinking at all, he would have known she was … He swallowed. He couldn't think that way. She wasn't here of her own volition. She didn't have her silvery box to beam her away. Hell, she didn't even have clothes. Knowing Bart, she wouldn't get any, either. The kid would probably drop her off at the safehouse in that sheet she'd been wrapped in. He'd have to send someone from the security team out to get some. She could borrow some from Lois for now but God knew how long she was going to be here, or how he was going to get her back. That was one of many things Zatanna was going to explain when he got back to Metropolis.

The second, of course, was how the hell she'd gotten up on his damn roof. The coincidence of her appearing there when she had, the night that Ultraman returned to the living, was beyond extraordinary. Yes, the database listed teleportation among her abilities, but why choose the roof? Why not his front door, his living room, his bedroom? She'd certainly seemed up for using his bed. The only answer he could think of was that she hadn't gotten there on her own strength. Someone had dropped her off there, and by "someone", he meant Clark Luthor, flying by en route to kill his latest un-accused and untried criminal.

Looking down at the suburban industrial parks passing below them, he wondered if this is what Clark saw every time he flew: giant warehouses churning out engine parts and cartons and stamped metal; giant semi-trucks transporting the products churned to factories and ports all over the continent; giant SUVs and pick-ups transporting the workers to and from the factories to houses and day-care facilities and restaurants, and all of it reduced to the size of a model train set. All of it no bigger than a child's toy. He wondered if that was what allowed him to pass judgment so quickly, to kill so easily, because human industry and human civilization and human lives were just so many playthings to an alien with the powers of a demi-god.

Or was it simply the way he'd been taught to view the world by Lionel? In Lionel's world, everyone was expendable, even Clark. But "The Blur" in Chloe's database wasn't a killer; based on his entry he was Jesus Christ in a buffalo-plaid shirt. _What differentiates this world from hers is the fact that Lionel got to Clark before the Kents did. _

He wondered if Lionel had any idea at all what Clark would be capable of now that he had his powers back.

Maybe he did, and he didn't care. Maybe that was the plan, to create a being so powerful and ruthless that not even Lionel could stop him. Not that Lionel would ever stop trying to control anything, but neither did he have any use for weakness. Weakness was to be eliminated wherever it emerged, even if it emerged in one's own son. In that insane logic rested his hope. Lionel had joined Swann's little club to welcome the Traveler to earth, but had double-crossed or killed every other member in order to win the prize for himself. If he and Genevieve had begun working together again – or, which was more likely, Lionel had duped her again – it had to be because he truly feared being weakened by losing his prize. Somehow, some poor girl in Smallville had gotten her hands on a genuine book of magic, and he had to find it. It was the only leverage he had.


	11. Chapter 11

An hour after Oliver arrived at the helipad, the helicopter landed in a field of what, he was told, the locals were still calling "the Hubbard place". When he'd first bought the place,the land had been riddled with meteor rocks. It'd been one of many acquisitions he'd forced through after Patty's death, the sum of which had made him _persona non grata_in Lowell County but, as he reminded himself, you didn't save the world by making friends.

Some days he had to repeat that to himself more frequently than others .Kasich drove him into town in the RAV-4 they kept on the property. There had been a few incidents when he'd come here before on his own; nothing he couldn't handle, but today every second counted and as former member of the few and the proud, Max had a way of making even the drunkest redneck think twice about the wisdom of starting anything. When they arrived at the high school, however, Oliver shook his head when Kasich climbed out of the cab.

**"**You sure?" Max asked.

**"**It might create the wrong impression. Besides, the biggest security threat in this place was committed to Belle Reeve a month ago, after announcing to the school the friendly neighborhood ravens had told him the Beast Fenrir had been released and Ragnorak was upon us."

**"**Hate when that happens."

**"**Don't we all. I should be about twenty minutes."

**"**Take all the time you need," Kasich said. "I got me some Waylon Jennings listening I gotta catch up on."

Oliver had been hoping to get to the school before classes began, but found instead he'd missed his mark by about ten minutes. The halls were flooded with hormone-and-sugar fueled young bodies, some of which nudged each other as he passed. By midday the entire town would know he'd been here and who he'd talked to, and by this afternoon his lawyers would be badgering Gina, wanting to know what the hell he'd been thinking. In this case at least he could be honest and tell them he'd been visiting an old friend.

Because of the stares and the nudges he was obliged to make his way to the principal's office, where an old adversary awaited him. He had no idea how TerranceReynolds had fallen from his tower as the headmaster of Excelsior Academy to the administration of a small-town public school, but he was sure it was a sordid, Luthor-entangled mess of a story. Of course the man appeared not to have aged a day from when he'd towered over Oliver in the headmaster's office, and of course Oliver was showing up to this rumble already wounded, a fact Reynolds lost no time in noting when he took off his sunglasses.

**"**It's good to know some things in this world never change, Mr. Queen. What are you doing here?" the older man asked.

**"**A family matter involving one of your teachers. Something's come up that I've been warned may make an appearance in the media, and I thought he'd rather hear it from me first."

**"**And why would that be?"

**"**Because it involves my family as well."

**"**I see." As Reynolds stared at him it was very difficult to avoid the impression he was once again in danger of being ratted out to Nanny Lizzie. Oliver breathed deeply and gripped the arrowhead left in his pocket from the night before. "Zoe?" Reynolds asked the pixie-like girl who'd been eyeing them from a desk faced with a video-camera on a tri-pod.

She darted across the room. "Yes, Principal Reynolds?"

**"**Would you be so good as to escort Mr. Queen to his desired location?" He handed the girl a bright orange square of paper marked "Hall Pass".

The girl's wide eyes darted anxiously from him to Reynolds and back again. "Who's doing the announcements?"

**"**I will," Reynolds said. "I do have some experience in that arena."

**"**I suppose that would be alright," she stared at her. "Definitely alright," she repeated. "Mr. Queen, if you'll follow me?

"He supposed he didn't really have a choice. "Lead the way," he said.

The girl, Zoe, set a good pace down the main hall and up the first flight of stairs to a wide landing, where she slowed and gave him an appraising look. "Is it true that you're selling back most of the land you've purchased in Lowell County for less than it cost you to buy it?"Oliver stumbled as he took the next stair. Where had she heard that? "No."

**"**But you are selling back the land?"

**"**Look, I don't know where you're getting your information," he began.

**"**It's called 'Smallville' for a reason," she said, cutting him off. "This re-sale is forcing a lot of last-minute adjustments to a lot of college financing plans."

For a second Oliver wondered if Reynolds had sicced her on him on purpose. "I can neither confirm nor deny any rumors about any land sales. Or anything else," he added when she looked as if she was about to ask another question. She sighed. "Well, I had to give it a shot."

Oliver found himself suppressinga laugh. "Yeah, I guess you did."She gave him another appraising look. "You know, the school has a weekly newscast that we upload to our YouTube station. It's usually a bunch of boring sports stuff, but a lot of people in the community watch it, and I bet a lot more of them would tune in to hear Oliver Queen's side of the story."

**"**You really think anyone in this community cares about my side of the story?"

**"**'Cares' might be a strong word," she answered. "But trust me, they'll still want to be able to bitch about it at The Beanery the next day."

Oliver laughed outright at that. "Yeah, they would. Tell you what, I'll think about it."

The girl stopped and rolled her eyes. "I'm not five. If you're not gonna do it, just say 'no'."

**"**It's not up to me. It's up to my lawyers."

The girl rolled her eyes again. "You'd think being the CEO of a global corporation you'd be the one handing out the orders."

**"**You'd think," he agreed. This girl was cracking him up. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. It was pretty tatty from being stored there the last few years. He hardly ever passed them out, but she could pin it up in her locker next to her magazine photo of Edward or Jacob or whichever vampire team she was on. "Here's my card. The phone number's for my assistant. Call in a couple of days. She can let you know if it's a go."

**"**There's no email address on here."

**"**Nope," he said. "Not to get off topic or anything, but aren't you supposed to be taking me somewhere?"

**"**Oh, yeah. Hang on sec," she told him, and poked her head in the door beside which they had stopped. A male voice told her to come in and she disappeared behind the door. Oliver studied the bulletin board on the other side of the hallway, on which red and yellow flyers were pinned announcing the Official Senior Skip Day, ticket sales for the Senior Party, enrollment deadlines for summer school and schedules for Crow's baseball and softball teams. Behind him the door opened and closed and when he turned, the girl was darting more curious looks between him and a polo-shirted Jason Teague.

**"**Thanks, Zoe," Jason said. "You'd better get to class."

**"**Um, could you sign my pass?"**"**Yeah." Jason took the neon orange scrap she handed him and made a few scrawls.**"**I hope everything's okay, Mr. Teague."

Jason lifted a brow at Oliver. "I hope it is too."

After a few more glances from him to the teacher, Zoe took off down the hall. Jason watched her leave, making sure she was down the stairs and the hall was empty before turning back to Oliver with a glare.

**"**You have got to be kidding me," he said.

**"**It's good to see you too. It's been a long time."

**"**What are you doing here?"

**"**Is there some place we can go to talk?"

**"**Not really. I've got oral reports I'm supposed to be listening to right now, and seriously, you are the last person I want people to know I've had a private conversation with. I have to live in this town."

**"**Okay." Oliver nodded. "I'm here because of Veritas."

**"**Jesus Christ."

**"**The sins of our fathers are catching up to us."

**"**No, they're not. I am done with that. Finished with it years ago, and if the CEO of Queen Industries doesn't mind a little friendly advice from a small-town football coach, you'll be finished with it too.

"**"**It'll never be finished. You know Lionel found the Traveler. You know what he's become."

**"**Yeah, I know. I also know my limits. I have the boxer's break to remind me of them every day," he said, lifting up his stiff right hand.

**"**How did that happen?"

**"**How do you think?"

**"**So you've had your own encounter with him."

Jason pulled his hand down and and shoved it in his pocket.

**"**Jason, I'm trying to find a way to stop him. Lionel thinks he has control of him but he doesn't, and it's only a matter of time before it really starts to hit the fan. Now, I've been doing some research and I learned that Lionel and your mother got involved in some scheme out here before she died, something to do with a book they were both interested in."

His back was shoved against the bulletin board so quickly he thought Jason might have developed super-speed out among the meteor rocks. "You don't know anything," Jason hissed. "You come out here and tell me you're trying to stop him? Because you're some magnanimous prick who's sticking up for the little guy on this?"

**"**Absolutely. Look, I didn't buy up half the town because I'm in love with E85. I bought it because the meteor rocks in this area are the only thing I've found to which he's vulnerable, and I need the mineral rights to that land. And it's not as if you didn't have a trust fund the size of most Third World GDP's, Mr. Small-Town Football Coach. At least I'm doing something besides pretending I'm Vince Lombardi."

Jason stepped back and flexed his fingers. "If the rocks stop him why not use those?"

**"**Because the effect only lasts if he's within a certain distance of them, and there aren't enough for me to pave the world."

**"**Can they kill him?"Oliver frowned. He'd had the meteor rock bullets cast on the assumption that they would work the way ordinary bullets did for humans, but Chloe's database seemed to suggest that as long as Clark had access to the sun, he could heal. "I don't know," he answered.

**"**So you want to try magic against him?"

**"**I … yeah," Oliver said, a little taken aback by the other man's sudden bluntness. Among other things. "Yeah, I am."

Jason nodded slowly, as if making a decision. "Okay. About seven years ago I was hanging out in Paris. I met this girl. She was from here, from Smallville. Her parents had died in the first meteor shower and she was in France studying her family history. Trying to create some sense of connection to her past or something. She was beautiful, and we just … we clicked, you know? As it happened it was all a set-up."**"**What do you mean? Who set you up?"

**"**Three guesses. Lana'd come across this book that had belonged to one of her ancestors. I have no idea how she was able to afford it; it was like something you'd find in a museum."

**"**Your mother wanted you to steal it for her."

**"**Among other things. She and Lionel were after some rocks. They called them 'Elements'. It had something to do with their little game but I was never able to figure out what. Lana had one. Again, I don't know how she'd gotten it," he added firmly.

A little too firmly, Oliver thought. "Was Lana able to perform magic?"

Jason stepped back and stared down the hallway for a moment. "I don't know," he said finally. "I don't know what was going on. She was under a lot of stress. Especially after Clark got involved."

**"**When was that?"

**"**Right at the end. Well, the end of Lionel and my mother harassing her. The weird thing was, whatever Lionel was doing, I don't think he told Clark about it. I mean, if he did, why not start with the end in mind and just have him take the stuff in the beginning?"

**"**Is that what happened?"

Jason's jaw clenched. "Yeah. He took the stone. Burned the book – with his eyes, if you can believe it, which, since we're having this conversation..." Jason shrugged. "He thought it was funny."

There was something else that had happened, Oliver was sure, but he was also sure Jason wasn't going to tell him what it was. Besides, he'd already told him what he'd come here to find out. The book was 'd flown all the way out here though. He needed to be sure. Pulling a print-out of the photo from the database, he handed it to Jason. "Was this the book?"

Jason squinted at the admittedly poor desk-top laser printing. "No. Lana's book was written in Latin. I'm not sure what this is. The characters are Roman, but the language isn't anything Romantic or Germanic."

**"**I'll have to defer to the French teacher on that one," Oliver said with a smile, his heart beating a little faster. Lana's book hadn't been Zatanna's book. That meant Zatanna's book might still be out handed back the photo. "Don't you have guys on retainer who can analyze this stuff?"

**"**Not anyone I trust." Bart's delusions aside, the only other member of the team besides him who spoke another language was Andrea. It was another weakness they needed to remedy. "If you ever get tired of grading papers, let me know." Jason shook his head. "This'll come as a shock, I know, but I like it here. The economy stinks," he said, quirking a brow at Oliver, "but for the most part they're good people. Good kids, even the ..." he trailed off. "And Lana's here."

**"**She wouldn't want to leave?"

**"**She's in law school at Met U right now, but no. She wouldn't. Not long-term. She's invested in this town. Her, uh, bio-dad's Henry Small."

**"**Ah." What were the chances? Sins of the fathers, indeed.

**"**So you see the conflict of interest I'd be having," said Jason, smirking.

**"**She's must be a helluva woman."

**"**She is. She … I'd appreciate it if you could keep what we discussed to yourself."

**"**Of course."

**"**Okay." Jason glanced back at the door to his classroom. "I should be getting back to class. Every single one of them's probably Tweeted I met with you."

**"**Sure." He hadn't thought about that. He guessed the first question Zoe would have for them in their imaginary future interview would be '_So how do you know Mr. Teague?' 'Well, Zoe, our parents were involved in a secret society to welcome aliens to earth.'_

**"**Just, one quick question. I know Lionel's got a shelf of crap like this," he said, waving the print-out. "Did your parents ever, you know, collect stuff like this."

Jason grimaced. "Shelves of it. My dad took most of it with him when he left."

**"**Do you know what happened to it when he died?"

**"**No. Like I said, I'm done with that crap."

**"**Yeah. Like you said," Oliver answered. He shoved the print-out in his pocket with the arrowhead. No leads there, then.**"**Sorry I can't be more help."

**"**I appreciate you taking the time." Oliver offered the other man his hand.

**"**You're welcome. Hey, you never know, you may stumble across something in my mother's old penthouse. I heard you bought the building."

Oliver frowned. "Where – you mean the Teague Tower?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "Yeah, she got in the divorce. Lived there for a few years after my dad left, before she moved to France. I remember she had a secret compartment in the bathroom, like something out of Mission Impossible. I used to sneak in there and try to break in."

Suddenly Oliver felt as if his heart-rate had tripled. "Where in the bathroom was it?"


	12. Chapter 12

Author's Note: This one's a little short, but I needed to get something posted. Apologies!

* * *

><p>Neither Dinah nor Bart responded to the texts he sent on the way out of the school, but he was given no time to worry over that fact. Gina, alerted, he was sure, by Kasich, called him as soon as he'd climbed into the cab of the truck. It really was called Smallville for a reason, he thought as she patched in Legal. Someone had seen him and called someone, who called someone, who had called someone in Queen Industries. He reassured them all the way back to the farm that he hadn't contacted any of the claimants and had not made any statements to the press. Once on the helicopter he made sure to pause between each exhale and inhale, read through the white paper, and made a list of notes that he emailed to Gina once they landed. He left the helipad feeling calm, confident, and ready to rip Bart a new one when he called.<p>

"Status report," he ordered.

"Man, you gotta get back to the Watchtower."

"Is Victor there?"

"No. But this situation is getting out of hand. Ninjastriker bailed. No sign of him at his place, and a lot of his equipment's missing too."

Oliver unlocked the Lexus. "Where there any signs of struggle?"

"You know, you hear that on TV all the time but I never know what it means."

_Oh for the love of... _"Was there anything broken, any furniture knocked over, any trails of blood leading to a dying man?"

"Some drawers were dumped out."

So the place had been tossed, and Stuart had either gotten wind of it and gone underground or whoever had done the search had gotten him. Or, he thought, his stomach tightening a little as he pulled into traffic, he had done the tossing on his own. Leaving in a hurry or covering his tracks?

"Boss?" Bart asked.

"Where's Dinah? Has she checked in?"

"She went to work."

"To _work_work? At the station?"

"Watchtower told her to go. Said it was a big newsday."

Oliver felt his heart begin to pound again. "Watchtower is supposed to be with Lois."

"Boss, it's not my fault you like 'em stubborn."

"You're saying Watchtower is still at the Watchtower."

"Yep."

He started to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose, only to remember that hand needed to steer the car. "Okay. I'll be there in five."

She'd found some clothes, he saw. Some jeans and a Metropolis PD t-shirt that had to have come from Dinah, and a red hoodie that had to have come from Bart. It also looked as if she'd found a comb and some lip-gloss, although not, apparently, a bra.

She spared him no more than a glance before re-absorbing herself with whatever was happening on her screen. She did, however, ask: "Did Lois get to the safe house alright?"

"Yeah. But you would know that if you'd gone with her like you were supposed to"

She gave him a longer look this time, one that posed no questions and made many statements with its blankness. He sighed and walked over to her. "Chloe."

She returned to her typing.

"Chloe." He slid his hand under her chin, pulling her face towards his. The flesh was willing, it seemed, but the spirit was strong. Her eyes stayed on the monitor, darting between an explosion of red dots covering the great state of Kansas.

"It's 'Watchtower 'until the mission's complete," she told him as he slid his hand back and into his pocket. "We need to keep our focus. I stayed because there was no one to available to run the operation. You were … wherever you were; Impulse says your other non-cybernetic geek's disappeared; and today could make or break Canary's career; there was no way she could be MIA today and not jeopardize her job. You needed me," she said, looking up at him finally.

Oliver gripped his arrowhead – _her_arrowhead – and stared back. What he needed was to be able to send her back to her own world in one piece.

"This is what I do," she added when he didn't respond. "Anyway, your security wouldn't have stood a chance against Lois and I together."

He tried not smirk at that, and failed. It was apropos. Sometimes you knew you'd fail but you knew you still had to try. "It's not safe here."

"Really? Ten bucks says Cyborg would pick it over wherever he's at now."

_Point. Game over._"Okay." He exhaled a long breath. "Do you have any ideas on where that might be."

"Not at any LuthorCorp property in Kansas. But the Show-Me state is an easy drive from here and the company does own warehouse space over there."

"What about family holdings? In order to find the farm Victor put together a list of real estate Clark held privately." He leaned over her. Her hands flew up off the keyboard and he tapped a few keys of his own. "Have Bart check these out," he said, straightening.

She nodded, her hands slowly coming back down to the desk top. "That'll help. There is one other possibility." She paused to give him an uncertain look.

"What is it?"

"On my side of the fence, Superman – that's the new moniker, by the way – has the mother of all snow forts up in the Arctic." She pulled up The Blur's M.O.I.R.A. entry. "Emphasis on the word 'fort'. Not only is it a giant artificial intelligence containing enough data to make the Library of Congress hang its head in shame, but it has some pretty nifty extraterrestrial weapons technology to boot."

"Why didn't you mention this before?"

"Aside from assuming you'd done the reading? I was hoping I wouldn't have to. The thing was a little complicated to create. First Clark had to sort of fuse together some Kryptonian rocks called 'Elements,'" she said. Oliver felt his stomach sink. "_..._and then plant the combined elements in the snow up in the high latitudes," she continued. "I've been looking, but I haven't been able to spot it on any satellite scan of the region, so I'd hoped he hadn't gotten around to doing all that over here. "

"No. He has it. It's there," Oliver said.

"So, you knew about it?"

"No. But I knew about the Elements. I learned about them today."

"He found them?"

"Yes." Just one that he knew of for sure, but he wouldn't bet a wooden nickel against the possibility that Clark had found the rest.

She nodded. "Okay, that definitely adds a double-plus to the ungood. The upside is that there are ways of getting there that don't involve super-speed. Back home there's a cave in the Kawatche system in Lowell county that acts a teleportation platform. If that chamber exists over here we should be able to teleport ourselves to the Fortress. We just need the key, and my Clark had a bad habit of leaving it in the lock."

Oliver couldn't imagine any Luthor being so sloppy. "No. _My_Clark would never do that. And there's no way of knowing where he would keep it."

"Mine carved out a hollow in a copy of _Tom Sawyer _and stuck it in a his desk drawer."

"It probably helped that no one was about to lift anything from the house of a mortgaged-to-the-hilt farm family."

"True," she said just as a breeze descended on them both before transforming into Bart.

"It's been a few minutes," she said.

"I got tamales. I figured I can't be the only one who's starving. We got pineapple and we got pork."

"One of each, please," she answered. "How was Missouri?"

"Sucky." He swallowed the half of the tamale he'd shoved in his mouth. "And no Cyborg. Not at any of the addresses you gave me."

"Then I guess now's the time to re-strategy, as an old not-friend used to say. How do you feel about going back to where you've been?"

"Is 'unhappy' an option?"

"This time you'd been looking for something rather than someone: a disc, shaped like an octagon, that has a few symbols on it, like this," she said, sketching a few lines on a scrap of printer paper, "around the edges. It could be in a hollowed-out book, it could be in his underwear drawer, it could be -"

"In a safe, or in a vault, or on his person," interrupted Oliver.

Chloe frowned at him. "The alternative is a grid search of the Arctic for something that may be disguised with an alien cloaking device."

"At least it would be larger than a breadbox! Worst-case scenario, he runs straight into it, bangs his head, comes back and tells us where it is."

"Or at the right speed he runs straight through the walls without even knowing they're there."

"I would know it was there," Bart said.

""You'd have him searching for a needle in a haystack."

Chloe turned back to Bart. "Have you ever done a systematic grid search of a featureless landscape?"

"I... no."

"So we'd have to slow him down so we can maintain a fix on him and he doesn't start running around in circles," she argued, turning back to Oliver. "Plus, you did hear the parts about 'artificial intelligence' and 'alien weapons', right? We can't send him up there without back-up and there's no way to get back-up up there in time without Bart hauling each person up individually. If Cyborg's up there our best bet for getting him out is to go as a team, and that means finding the key."

Everything she said made sense and if he hadn't just had the meeting he'd had with Jason, it would have been the route he'd have gone down. But he had, and he knew if they wanted Victor alive and whole and home today, they were going to have to bring Clark to them. "That is pointless and you know it, Chloe!"

"Elizabeth," Bart corrected.

"Watchtower," Chloe said. She crossed her arms. "Fine. What do you suggest?"

He ignored her stiffened stance and turned to Bart. "Can you really run through stuff, like she said?"

Bart flicked his eyes over to Chloe. "Um, I don't know. Is this something Other Me can do?"

"Yes," she said slowly. Oliver didn't glance over but her voice sounded a little less frigid than it had. "He does it by vibrating at the same speed as the molecules in whatever he wants to go through."

Bart snickered. "Vibrates, huh?"

"Bart, focus!" Oliver barked.

Bart rolled his eyes, then assumed an expression of what he probably thought profundity looked like to respond to Chloe. "That sounds right in theory. But what works in theory doesn't always work in practice."

"It does," Chloe assured him. "I've seen him do it. I bet," she said in a suddenly low voice, "that right now, you could go through that wall right there." She pointed to the wall separating the great room of the penthouse from the elevator foyer and gave Oliver a raised-eyebrow stare. He almost laughed, but Bart was straightening up and he didn't want to ruin the momentum she was creating.

"Oh, well, that. Sure," Bart said. He walked over to the wall and gave it an appraising once-over. "Totally. I just need to, you know, vibrate." He held up his right hand and ran it over the wall's surface. Oliver caught Chloe's eye and grinned. Chloe shushed him with her hand and pointed back to the wall, where Bart's arm had disappeared up to the elbow. "Oh yeah," he said. "Yeah. We are going to do this."

With that he was gone.

And back.

And gone.

And back.

"See?" he asked. "Just like I told you! So where do I vibrate next, boss?"

Oliver found himself smiling almost as broadly as Chloe and Bart. "I was thinking the bathroom."


End file.
